Troubleshooting PayPal Payments

Here are some of the problems you may encounter while accepting payments with PayPal, and how you can fix them!

Accepting Payments In Different Currencies

When an invoice is raised in a currency that is different from the one set in your PayPal account (e.g. an invoice is paid for in GBP when your PayPal account is in USD), PayPal will accept the payment but put it on hold, setting its status as  Unclaimed. As a result of this, the invoice will not be automatically set to Paid in Hiveage.

To overcome this issue, please follow these steps:

1. Log in to your PayPal account, and go to Profile > My Selling Tools.
2. Select Block Payments from the Getting Paid and Managing My Risk section.
3. Pick the appropriate settings from Allow payments sent to me in a currency I don’t hold.

If you select  Ask Me, decide accepting or denying each individual payment, then you would have to login to your PayPal account and Accept the payment manually each time. Once you do so, the payment status will get updated in Hiveage as well.

Enabling IPN (Instant Payment Notification)

Instant Payment Notification allows you to integrate your PayPal payments with Hiveage, so you get immediate notification and authentication of the PayPal payments you receive. ( Learn more)

To enable IPN:

1. Log into your PayPal account, and go to Profile > My selling tools > Instant Payment Notification.
2. Follow the instructions to enable your IPN, and enter the following as your Notification URL (where ‘subdomain’ is your Hiveage ID/subdomain):

<code>https://[subdomain].hiveage.com/checkout/paypal

Accepting Multiple Payments For An Invoice Number

PayPal blocks multiple payments made to the same invoice ID to prevent accidental payments. This could be an issue if you need to reuse an invoice number (e.g. two different invoices sent by CurdBee and Hiveage).

To accept such payments:

1. Log into your PayPal account, and go to Profile > My selling tools > Block payments.
2. Under Block accidental payments, select No, allow multiple payments per invoice ID.

Disabling Forced PayPal Login For Clients

Sometimes your clients may be asked to login when they attempt to make a credit card payment to you via PayPal. This can be annoying, but fortunately it is also fixable.

1. Login to your PayPal account.
2. Go to Profile > My Selling Tools > Website preferences.
3. Tick the PayPal Account Optional checkbox.

From there set the option to ‘On’ under ‘PayPal Account Optional’

Turning the Contact Telephone Number On

If you wish to collect the client’s telephone number during checkout, you have to enable this setting in PayPal by following these steps:

1. Login to your PayPal account.
2. Go to Profile > My Selling Tools > Website preferences.
3. Scroll down the page to the Contact Telephone Number section.
4. Select one of the following options:
   • On (Optional Field) – PayPal lets payers share their telephone numbers with you, as an option.
   • On (Required Field) – PayPal informs payers that their telephone numbers will be shared with you because you require it.
   • Off (Recommended) – PayPal does not share payers’ telephone numbers with you.
   • Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Save button.

See also: PayPal Fees - How Much Does PayPal Charge?