PayPal Web Payment Standard: forcing PayPal account creation now?

Had a nice little custom button with a few parameters I was POSTing to PayPal (and getting POSTed back via IPN) a few years ago working fine. Payments were disabled for several years, but now my client wants to resume subscriptions with their new campaign.

I switched back to the sandbox hostname/merchant accounts, did a sandbox transaction with a test Visa card, and all was well.

Switched it to the live hostname/merchant account, went to do another test with a real Visa, but noticed that not only has the real PayPal site been completely rebranded/redesigned, they now seem to be forcing you to creat开发者_StackOverflowe a PayPal account: on the sandbox, there's a blurb with a link that says "continue" which takes you right to the credit card/billing information (this is identical to what the live PayPal site used to look like a few years ago).

NOTE: The merchant account has changed; I'm not sure if that matters or not and/or if there's any settings in there I need to change.

Question: is this the way it is now with PayPal? I can't seem to find any official information that says yes/no. Besides the Express, is there any other IPN method that'll work here or is this a policy thing at PayPal? I'd hate to rewrite my working/tested code, but this isn't going to fly with my client.

Yahel's answer is incorrect: I called PayPal, and they explained that the following conditions must be met in order to accept non-PayPal payments:

• The business email address must be confirmed. You can check by going to Profile > Email.

• PayPal Account Optional must be checked:

  1. Go to www.paypal.com.au and log in to your Business account.
  2. Click 'Profile icon' near the top right of the page (next to "Log out" button)
  3. Click "Profile & settings"
  4. Click ‘My selling tools.’
  5. Click ‘Update' beside 'Website preferences.’
  6. Select 'On' under 'PayPal Account Optional' near the bottom of the page.
  7. Click 'Save.'

Yes paypal has been forcing users to create an account for a long time now. Before that you could use a credit card up to 10 times and then it would force you to create an account anyway.

The reason you are seeing the old branding in your sandbox is probably because it is you old sandbox on an old paypal server.

Last I tried there was no way around this new policy.

But djechelon is right, they have an excellent customer service, give them a call.

PayPal does force people to create accounts, even when they want to just make a single payment. I was puzzled by this situation too: I was choosing the option to pay without a PayPal account, but still was forced to provide all the private details enough for PayPal to create an account for me against my wishes. Very sneaky of PayPal! Then I found this page and that explained a lot.

This is the message I received in my PayPal Account:

PayPal Account Optional

When this feature is turned on, your customers will go through an optimized checkout experience. This feature is available for Buy Now, Donations, and Shopping Cart buttons, but not for Subscription buttons.

So you cannot provide a regular "Subscribe" experience to non-PayPal customers. I believe you must pay the $19.99 a month "Enhanced Subscription" for this.

PayPal Has a Purchasing Limit of $3,000 for "Guests".

I ran into this issue as well and @gravyface was bang on with setting your account preferences. However, my customers were still having issues paying without a PayPal account.

I called PayPal and it turns out they have a $3,000 (cumulative) purchasing limit for "guests". My customer's invoice was for $7,000 so even though my preferences were set to make the PayPal account optional, it still would not go through.

Hope that helps others.

JP