WC PayPal Payments not working

Hi @dd466,

WordPress debugging with WP_DEBUG or at the very least WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY should be disabled on production sites.
When WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY is enabled, eventual warnings or notices will display on your website frontend. That’s the warning at the top of the screen.

The displayed warning is probably why PayPal Payments is not working for you.
The warning comes from the WooCommerce Blocks feature plugin and doesn’t have anything to do with PayPal Payments. But any warning visible in the front end can negatively impact the WooCommerce Checkout process in general. Debugging is only meant to be enabled for testing or development purposes.

I suggest updating the WooCommerce Blocks plugin to the latest version and if the warning persists, reach out to the WooCommerce Blocks support to learn more about why this warning occurs on your site.
But PayPal Payments may not work reliably as long as WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY is enabled and eventual warnings/notices are displayed, so debugging should be disabled if you are not actively using it.
I hope this helps!

Kind regards,
Niklas

Hi Niklas,
Thanks for your response. I have never installed the WooCommerce Blocks plugin. I’m not sure why it’s looking for that plugin. Any ideas?

As for debugging, I’ll have to look into that. I am not a programmer. I only learned HTML years ago to create my first website. Now I’m getting help from someone who knows more technical details than I do. I have not been aware of using debugging, but maybe it’s set up as a default.

Everything was working fine up until (I think) when I updated Woo Commerce to the latest version. I didn’t install the Blocks plugin or do anything with debugging…

Thanks,
Dana

Hi @dd466,

In update 6.8.0, WooCommerce included more Block-related features in the core WooCommerce plugin. These were previously exclusive to the WooCommerce Blocks feature plugin, but these features are slowly moving into the WooCommerce core plugin.
PayPal Payments is not yet compatible with the new Blocks though.

Also, a warning is generally not a terrible thing to happen. But the act of displaying such a message in the front end can cause problems, even if the underlying message is harmless.
Setting define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false ); in the wp-config.php is already enough to get rid of the message in the front end.
More often than not, you only notice if debugging is enabled when there are errors/warnings/notices displayed, but otherwise, it looks like all is normal.

PayPal Payments should be working better without debugging enabled, though.
But please let us know if any problems persist for you.
Thanks!

Kind regards,
Niklas

Hi Niklas,
I did look at my wp-config.php file and the word “DEBUG” is not in there. So is it enabled even if it’s not in the file?
I did update WP Faster Cache on 9/6 and the error message seems to have disappeared. I also re-installed Woo Commerce that day (6.8.2). I have not yet re-installed WC PayPal Payments, since I want to take it one step at a time.

I did create a staging site on my host, and I re-installed WC PayPal Payments there, which looks fine, but the staging site doesn’t exactly seem to mirror my website. There are always some images missing, so it’s hard to judge if a plugin is screwing things up or not.

Should I add the Debug message in the wp-config.php file even if Debug is not stated in that file?

Thanks for your help!
Dana

Hi Dana,

If debugging is not mentioned anywhere in the wp-config.php, it should already be disabled, and there is no need to add what I mentioned above.

In any case, the problem here that prevented PayPal Payments from working was most likely the visible warning in the frontend & specifically on the Checkout page.
Since the warning is gone after updating your cache plugin, I would also expect PayPal Payments to work again.
But please let us know if any problems persist for you after re-enabling PayPal Payments.
Thanks!

Kind regards,
Niklas

Since we haven’t heard back from you, I’m going to mark it as resolved.
In case you’re still having problems, feel free to let us know!

Hi Joost & Niklas,

Yes, thank you. I got caught up with 3 other tech problems and was a bit overwhelmed. The error message went away, and I still waited a couple weeks before deciding to try installing the WooCommerce PayPal Payments plugin again. It has worked for a couple orders so far, so I think the problem is resolved.

I received an email from PayPal about this plugin with a link to a video, and was trying to follow along with it, and with the written instructions also, but they didn’t match the screens on my website. I think the video and instructions are already out of date. I had to just guess and experiment, hoping I was on the right track. It would be great to have more current instructions.

Thanks,
Dana

Hello @dd466

We currently only maintain one site for our documentation at this moment, you can find this here.

If you have any issue that is not documented there, you can still reach out to us here, or open a direct engagement to us via our service desk if you want to share logs or the system report and don’t want to share that on a public forum.

I hope all is working now according to your expectations and don’t require our support. However, don’t hesitate to contact us again!

Kind regards,
Joost

Hi Joost,

Yes, I did look at that documentation. I think it’s all working okay now, but this section near the top that says:

After installing and activating the WooCommerce PayPal Payments plugin, go to WooCommerce  > Settings.
Click the Payments tab.
The Payment methods list will include two PayPal options.
Click Set Up (or Manage if the extension is already active) next to PayPal. (not PayPal Standard).
The PayPal Checkout tab presents different options for the onboarding process:

The image below that is not what showed in my WordPress dashboard. So I had to just keep trying different things in the hope I was making the correct selections. Maybe each theme shows these screens in slightly different ways.

Thanks for your help,
Dana