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Troubleshoot payment issues

What are payment issues?

Examples of payment issues are:

  1. A user isn't receiving payment notifications
  2. A user is receiving payments but sees nothing in their Form Response Dashboard.
  3. Redirect to PayPal isn't working.

How to troubleshoot payment issues:

Things to always check first:

  1. Did the user connect their PayPal account?
  2. Did the user set a product base price and use a supported format for the price?

Once you have ensured that this is set up correctly, proceed to the next step:

  1. If the user has Require Payment turned on in their Form and is receiving payments but no email notifications, check the Payment Received column:
  • If "Yes": Check the Delivery Report for their emails to see if their emails are bouncing.
  • If "No": Ask user if they have Instant Payment Notifications (IPN) enabled. If IPN isn't turned on in PayPal, PayPal will not send us a confirmation about a payment and the status in the "Payment Received" column will not update.
  1. If responses are missing in Form Response Dashboard:

 

  • Check if user has Single Submission Only turned on and isn't receiving the second or third submission from a customer. Sometimes, a customer will submit multiple payments (because they can do that using the "Continue to Payment" link in the form), but their additional responses will not go through because the user is blocking them. In this case, have the user disable the "Single Submission Only" setting.

Require Payment setting in Form Builder

Form Response Emails are not sent until the end user submits the required payment. We set this up this way so that POWr users are not receiving email confirmations of orders before the customer has actually paid them.

Customers could theoretically complete the form, but then close the PayPal window without paying.

If the user has a Discount Code set up, check if one of the discount codes could cause the price total to be $0 or less. If the user's total was $0 or less, they did not get redirected to PayPal and the email notification does not get triggered.

CAPTCHAs + Require Payment = no bueno

Forms with CAPTCHAs enabled will not accept payments. CAPTCHAs disrupt the process of transferring information to PayPal, and break the entire workflow. If someone wants to accept a payment, they cannot use CAPTCHAs. Period.

Product cost: $0

In eCommerce: 

  • A physical item can not have its cost set to $0.
  • A digital item can have its cost set to $0. The download will happen immediately and no information is collected from the user.

In Form Builder:

  • Any item can be $0, but no redirect to PayPal happens (hence, no email alert is triggered).

Selling subscriptions with POWr

Users must have a PayPal Business, Merchant, or Premier account to sell subscriptions.

Discount Codes applied to Subscription purchases will be applied each time the customer is charged (e.g. a 20% discount on a $10/mo subscription, will cost $8/mo).

Subscriptions can be cancelled by the buyer or seller by logging in to PayPal.

eCommerce / Digital Download in Wix:

In Wix, selling digital items requires connecting to POWr Account. Wix's Media Manager only supports images, so user must have a POWr account to sell files.

eCommerce and Payment Button in Weebly:

In Weebly, users cannot use POWr eCommerce or Payment Button through Weebly App Center without upgrading their Weebly account to Business.

The reason for this is that Weebly does not offer subscription payments in any of their own apps. Advertising the POWr tools as features of Weebly Business is a way to incentivize users to upgrade to a higher plan.

If a user wants to use these Apps on their Weebly site without upgrading in Weebly, they can use HTML install.

PayPal error messages

Many people in this world use PayPal. Chances are, that someone else has seen the same error message a user is reporting. Google the error message to get more information about its cause. Some of the things that can break PayPal checkout in POWr App:

  • User has not verified their email with PayPal
  • User has not paid for their Business, Premier, or Merchant renewal
  • User has a locked account due to suspicious activity

If the internet doesn't know the answer to your question, you can always contact PayPal to find out more.