PayPal Checkout is a payment system that you can use to accept online credit card payments on your website. You can use it for one-time payments or recurring payments.
If you enable a payment system other than Wild Apricot Payments, and your organization is based in the US or Canada, a 20% Payment System Servicing Fee will be applied to your account's billing plan on your next renewal date. For more information, click here.
Paying using PayPal Checkout
Once you've integrated a PayPal account with your Wild Apricot site, visitors to your site can pay online for membership fees and event registrations, and make donations.
With PayPal Checkout as your payment system, your members and other contacts will be redirected to a PayPal site when they choose to pay online. They will have the option of paying by credit card, debit card, or using PayPal.
Members must log into their PayPal account to sign up for a recurring membership.
After they have completed payment, they will be returned to your Wild Apricot site.
Setting up your PayPal account
Instructions for third-party payment systems are provided as a courtesy and may contain out of date information or screen clips. For the latest instructions, consult PayPal's website.
To accept online payments using PayPal Checkout, you must have a PayPal account, either Business, Premier, or Personal (some limits might apply on Personal accounts, please contact PayPal for more details). If you don't have a PayPal account already, you can create one as part of the integration process.
Recurring payments
So that you can accept recurring payments with PayPal Checkout, make sure that Merchant Initiated Billing (aka Reference transactions) is enabled for your PayPal account. If you are a US or Canadian resident, you can either wait up to 2 weeks for this to occur automatically or you can contact PayPal yourself and request the change. Residents of other countries need to contact PayPal directly about this.
Integrating your PayPal account with Wild Apricot
Once you have set up your PayPal account, follow these steps to integrate it with your Wild Apricot site:
- Click the Settings menu to display the Global settings screen.
- Click Payment settings under Your account.
- On the Payment settings screen, click the Edit button. If you don't see an Edit button at the top of the screen, scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click Other payment settings, then click the Edit button on the screen that appears.
- Click the Payment system drop-down list and select PayPal Checkout.
- Click the Connect to PayPal button.
- Sign into your PayPal account or follow the instructions to create one.
- After signing in, click the Go back to Wild Apricot button.
- Choose your preferred payment method. The method you chose will be the default method presented to visitors to your site.
- Select the default country you want to display to the customers for online payments.
- Select the currency you want to use in your transactions. (This should match your PayPal account.)
Note: Do not change the currency after your site begins accepting online payments. If you change the currency, existing payment records will not be recalculated and will no longer display correct amounts. - Add payment instructions to be displayed to the customer.
- Click Save changes.
Now that you have set up your Wild Apricot site to receive online payments, a Pay online button will appear after a visitor to your site clicks the Confirm button while applying for membership or registering for an event.
Disconnecting from PayPal Checkout
To disconnect your PayPal Checkout account from your Wild Apricot account, you will need to remove Wild Apricot from the list of connected providers in your settings on PayPal. To do so, follow these steps:
- Log into your PayPal account, then click the API access option under Operations.
- On the screen that appears, click the Manage API permission option.
- On the Manage permissions screen, check the Wild Apricot option, then click the Yes, revoke button to confirm.
Recurring payments
Recurring payments (aka scheduled payments) are supported by PayPal Checkout. No special settings are required, you just need to enable recurring payments for one or more membership levels.
Members who sign up for recurring membership levels on a site using PayPal Checkout must do so using their PayPal account. They cannot sign up for recurring payments using a credit card.
Members can stop recurring payments from their Wild Apricot member profile page.
Administrators can stop recurring payments from the member's membership details.
Troubleshooting
Unable to process transactions?
If you encounter problems using PayPal Checkout to process transactions on your Wild Apricot site, check the following:
- Contact PayPal to see if there are any issues with your PayPal account (you may have missed some payments, for example).
- Check your Wild Apricot audit log for transaction errors and compare them to the list of PayPal error codes.
IPN error notifications
If you receive an IPN error notification from PayPal, make sure that IPN is disabled within your PayPal account settings.
REFUSED_MARK_REF_TXN_NOT_ENABLED
If your members see this error message when they try to make a payment on your site, you need to contact PayPal directly to enable reference transactions (recurring payments) for your PayPal account.
