How to setup PayPal payment method for subscription

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 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:

1. Go to: WooCommerce > Settings > Payments.
2. Use the toggle under Enabled to select PayPal.
3. Select Set up. You will be redirected to the PayPal Standard settings.
4. 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

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 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?

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: