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zvikico
Jun '10

Hi,



Last week, PayPal announced the availability of Guest Payments. Basically it means that it is possible to pay without a PayPal account using the PayPal API.



5https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2010/06/it%E2%80%99s-official-guest-payments-is-now-live/5



Now, I'm using WebSite Payments Standard (Pro is not offered in my country) and I know for a fact that, although I enabled paying without an account, this works only in some countries. This new API could be a solution. Are you aware of it?



Thanks,

Zviki

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E-junkie_GuruWebmaster & Support Guru
Jul '10

Apologies for this delayed reply. We looked into this new Guest Payments service, and apparently this only makes it optional for the seller (payment recipient) to have a PayPal account, so e.g. if you don't normally accept payments by PayPal but someone insists on sending you a one-off payment through PayPal, you can accept their payment without having to sign up for PayPal yourself.



That blog post's statement, "Guest Payments allows developers to collect credit card payments without requiring their customers to open a PayPal account," is a bit confusing, as "customers" in this case refers to the developer's clients for whom they are building an e-commerce site -- i.e., the developer's "customer" would be the seller, not the buyers who would be shopping on the seller's site. Incidentally, this sort of confusion is why we prefer to use the terms "seller" and "buyer" rather than "customer", "client", etc. in our own communications and help pages. :^)



As for PayPal checkouts offering buyers an option to pay directly with a card rather than logging into or starting a PayPal account, this FAQ page explains more about the conditions (that we're aware of) when PayPal will or won't offer that card-based option:

9http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/trouble.paypal-no-card-checkout.htm9

zvikico
Jul '10

Thanks.



I have a customer from Brazil that couldn't complete a payment without a credit card. He is using a private machine and I believe he did not login to PayPal at any point in time. I contacted PayPal support at the time and it seems it really does depend on the location of your buyer. The "credit card without an account" option is not available to payers in all countries (again, talking about seller using PayPal Standard, not pro).

E-junkie_GuruWebmaster & Support Guru
Jul '10

PayPal may have other criteria why they do/don't offer the card-based payment option, aside from the presence of a PayPal site login cookie. This may include location-based restrictions. There is no way to force PayPal to offer the cart-based payment option during checkout on their site every time. The new PayPal Guest Payments service only makes having a PayPal account optional for you, the seller receiving the payment, not for the buyer sending the payment.



The only way to offer all buyers a card-based checkout option would be to upgrade to PayPal Website Payments Pro (currently only available to merchants in US, UK and Canada only) or Authorize.Net (only available to merchants in the US). 2CheckOut seems to offer broader international support, although we can only offer Buy Now buttons for that checkout method -- see more details about integrating 2CO here:

1http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/selling-with-2checkout.htm1