The subscription plugin and its associated payment gateways have to work hand in hand for a faultless recurrence payment. Our plugin, Subscriptions for WooCommerce provides an extension for Paypal which is the inbuilt WooCommerce payment gateway. PayPal handles the automatic recurring subscription payment in the following two different manners:
- PayPal Standard
- PayPal Reference Transactions
PayPal Standard
Paypal standard is a widely used payment method as it’s very easy to set up. You will need to have the following requirements prior to using PayPal Standard as the payment method for the subscription products:
- verified PayPal business account
- IPN (Instant Payment Network) configured appropriately as mentioned below in the section Configuring PayPal IPN
- valid PayPal API credentials entered into WooCommerce
Set up and Configuration
Follow the steps to configure PayPal Standard:
- Go to: WooCommerce > Settings > Payments.
- Use the toggle under Enabled to select PayPal.
- Select Set up. You will be redirected to the PayPal Standard settings.
- Enter your email address in the PayPal Email field, which is the most important thing to configure before making payments. The email entered here must match with the email on the PayPal Business account.

Advanced Options
- Send shipping details to PayPal: If you want WooCommerce to send the shipping details to PayPal to create shipping labels instead of billing, enable this checkbox.
- Address override option: PayPal verifies addresses if enabled, therefore, it is advised to keep it disabled, but it can be useful in preventing address information from being changed.

- API Username
- API Password
- API Signature
To get the API credentials:
- Log in to your PayPal business account.
- Get API Access credential in any of the two ways:
- Go to Activity at the top of the page and choose API Access or
- From Account settings > API Access.
- Scroll down to NVP/SOAP API Integration (Classic) and click Manage API credentials.
- Create keys if not done already. Else, copy the API Username, API Password, and Signature
- Paste API Username, API Password, and Signature in the respective fields of the plugin.
Paypal Reference Transactions
Paypal Reference transactions are considered in cases where the PayPal standard fails to meet certain requirements or when advanced subscriptions features have to be implemented. However, PayPal Reference transactions can be availed only by privileged customers approved by PayPal. If your account is approved, Subscriptions will automatically detect that Reference Transactions are supported and switch to using that payment method. On the other hand, If your account does not have Reference Transactions enabled, WooCommerce Subscriptions continues to use PayPal Standard for subscription purchases and recurring payments.
Refer to know How do I get Reference Transactions Enabled with PayPal?
Configuring PayPal IPN
Be it PayPal Standard or Reference Transactions, both the payment gateways make use of the PayPal IPN (Instant Payment Notification) to monitor recurring payments and updates in subscription status.
- From your PayPal Business account, go to Profile > Account settings > Notifications.
- Update the instant payment notification.

- To start or stop receiving IPN messages and to decide where to send them, click the Choose IPN Settings button.

- Enter the notification URL and enable Receive IPN messages as shown below:
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Comments (5)
John
October 4, 2022
No longer working? I get an error saying “Sorry, it seems there are no available payment methods which support subscriptions.” now.
Mike
December 5, 2022
Hi John,
In order to enable recurring payments using WooCommerce PayPal Payments, you need to enable the below-listed options in PayPal:
ROBERT EMMA
March 24, 2022
For some reason, paypal standard stopped working for subscription products.
Joanne
February 21, 2022
HI
If I add Subscriptions plugin to my woocommerce page
when I add a product and set it to subscription
how do I make sure it takes the said amount out of their Credit Card (( stripe )) and or (( paypal )) every month or every year automatuically
I am setting up a subscription for a PAID service SEO
thanks
Joanne
Mark
March 21, 2022
Hi Joanne,
Greetings from Webtoffee!
If a user purchases a subscription product created using our Subscription for Woocommerce plugin using a compatible Stripe or PayPal plugin, it will be automatically charged based on the recurring billing charge. There are no special configuration needed.