How to Accept PayPal Payments in Your WordPress Forms

Are you looking for a way to start accepting PayPal payments on your WordPress forms? Getting set up is really simple and in this post we'll show you how

Taking payments on your website is probably something you’re eager to learn more about. What business wouldn’t prioritize that?

Collecting payments online is a much simpler, convenient method of getting paid. You can save all that time spent recording manual transactions and chasing people up for payments. By linking your website with an established payment processor, you are increasing your potential for growth.

Being able to pay online is much simpler for the customer too. All they need to do is enter their details and away it goes. It gives them potentially faster access to your products or services. It’s a win-win. No customers will be scared away by a lack of an online payment option.

Why use PayPal for WordPress payment forms?

PayPal is a huge name that’s instantly recognizable and trusted by 277 million users worldwide.

According to their research, 54% of people are more likely to buy from a business that provides PayPal as a method of payment.

Having PayPal on your website can set your customers’ minds at ease as they know their payments will be handled safely.

It also gives you peace of mind because it makes payments easier to collect by a trusted name, without concerns about PCI compliance.

In today’s post, we’ll be taking you through the step by step process of accepting PayPal payments on your website, with the help of Formidable Forms.

How to use PayPal with Formidable Forms

We have a PayPal forms plugin that allows you to accept payments via PayPal on your WordPress website.

With it, you’ll be able to collect instant payments from your customers after a form is submitted. They don’t even need a PayPal account to do it in many cases. All you need is a Formidable form that redirects to a PayPal payment page. From there, your customers can choose to use their own PayPal account or just a credit card.

You can set up recurring subscription payments if you need to or just one-off payments.

You can also use conditional logic with your PayPal forms. That way, you can send customers to PayPal, only if they make certain selections in the form. For example, you can ask the customer whether they want to pay at a later date by check or if they want to head straight over to PayPal to make the payment.

Step 1 - Download and install the PayPal forms plugin in WordPress

First of all, you’ll need to go to your WordPress admin area and click on ‘Formidable’ on the left and then ‘Add-ons’. Simply find the Paypal forms plugin and click ‘Install’.

Step 2 – Set up the PayPal plugin

The next thing you’ll need to do is integrate PayPal with Formidable Forms. You’ll need to have a PayPal account already set up for this bit.

Go to ‘Formidable’ and then ‘Global Settings’. You should see a ‘PayPal’ tab, click on this.

Enter your PayPal email address and update any other settings you need. If you’re installing this on a website that is already live, you’ll need to set your ‘PayPal environment’ to ‘Live’.

Step 3 - Set up instant payment notifications

This part is really important in order to ensure that collected payments get correctly marked as paid. You’ll need to configure your PayPal account to send payment notifications.

To do this, follow the steps below:

1. Log into PayPal and go to your ‘Profile’ and then ‘Profile and Settings’.
2. Click on ‘My Selling Tools’
3. Scroll down to find the section ‘Getting paid and managing my risk’
4. Find ‘Instant Payment Notifications’ and click ‘Update’
5. Enter a notification URL. It doesn’t really matter what URL you put through as Formidable will override this anyway.
6. Click ‘Receive IPN messages (Enabled)’ and ‘Save’

Step 4 – Set your form to accept PayPal payments

Once you’ve followed the steps above, it’s time to set up a form that will collect the payments. You can choose a WordPress order form you already have, or you can create the form you wish to use. Once you've got a form, simply follow the steps below:

1. Click on form ‘Settings’ > ‘Form Actions’ and ‘PayPal’ 
2. Label your PayPal form action for easy reference (you’ll only see this on the back-end)
3. Create your ‘Item Name’. You can type in a product name or you can set it to change depending on the user’s selection.
4. Enter the PayPal email address associated with your account.
5. Set the amount for the payment. This can be from a field in your form or a set amount.
6. Set the payment type to either a one-time payment, a donation or a subscription.
7. Select the currency
8. Click ‘Update’ so all your settings can be saved.

Step 5 – Set up recurring payments (optional)

As you may have seen above, there is an option to select 'Payment Type. If you know you’ll need to set up recurring payments, like a membership system, you’ll need to switch this to 'Subscription'.

You can then set the ‘Repeat Every’ value to however often you wish to set up the recurring bill for. You can even choose to include a trial period where the customer won’t get billed for the first subscription. Offering a free trial is always a great method to get new people to sign up.

Step 6 – Trigger an action after payment is complete

When payment has been completed, it’s time for you to choose the next step for your new customer. You can choose to send a notification email or invoice, subscribe a user to your email list, send a SMS or add a user to your registration list.

1. Go to form ‘Settings’ and ‘Form Actions’. Open the type of action you would like to trigger.
2. Scroll down to 'Action Triggers' and select ‘Trigger this action after PayPal payment’.
3. Click Update

That’s the basics all covered. For even more customization, take a look at our full set of step by step instructions for each option in our documentation.

Want to offer more than one payment option? Doing so gives your users more choice to pick the one most suitable for them. Read our post on How to Add Optional Online Payment Processing to WordPress Forms.

If you're not already using Formidable Forms, take a look at the many ways our WordPress form builder can help you build effective, conversion-driven forms for your WordPress site.