Could not process order because it was not possible to save the payment

Hi @wkhaksar,

When there is an existing billing agreement between the merchant and buyer account from a previous integration, then it will not be possible for the buyer to save a PayPal account with the new integration.
This is not a problem with the plugin per se but a limitation at PayPal, and not yet documented clearly. There can only be one active billing agreement between a merchant/buyer.

Existing billing agreements must be canceled first before the buyer could save a payment method with PayPal Payments (which establishes a new billing agreement). Once a payment method has been saved, it can be used for multiple subscriptions.

The behavior of failing the order was introduced in version 1.6.2, but a downgrade is not a solution as this was implemented on purpose.
When the payment method can’t be saved, the subscription couldn’t be automatically renewed.
Previously, the subscription was created regardless and then the renewal payments started to fail if there was no saved payment method. If the plugin knows that no payment method has been saved, then the subscription will not be created in the first place for now.
There will be more improvements in this regard coming soon though.
I hope that makes it a bit more clear.

Kind regards,
Niklas

Hello,
thank you for the nice explanation, now it is clear.

I tested with Sandbox, it was working as you explained, but the thing I noted is: two customers cannot subscribe with the same Paypal account, right?

You mentioned the billing agreement, how we can remove the existing ones? As you mentioned if there is any billing exists from previous versions, then the payment will not process for it with new version.

In the meantime, when is the aproximate plan for the new release of this plugin? We are waiting to activate back the plugin in our website, we disabled it right now because of this problem.

With Regards,
WEQAR

@niklasinpsyde I’d also like to know the answers to @wkhaksar questions.

Can two customers start a subscription using the same Paypal account?
(this is not uncommon, as we have a few customers that have multiple accounts to keep the subscriptions separated).

Thanks

Hello,

this will probably not work, only when it is purchased with the same WordPress account, you can use the same PayPal account to buy a 2nd subscription.

A different WordPress user account would have different unique customer IDs and currently, PayPal Payments can only cover a billing agreement with a dedicated customer ID.

Since it has been a very long time since there was any activity on this thread, I will mark it as resolved. Don’t hesitate to open a new thread if you have any more questions.

Kind regards,
Joost

@joostvandevijver there’s a hot thread about this error in gitub:
https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-paypal-payments/issues/410#issuecomment-1108152034

I don′t think it can be marked as resolved, multiple users are affected by this.

Thanks
Daniele

Hello @dabesa
Since the solution will be worked in the GH thread, this chat will not add anything to the conversation, except to share the URL to the GH thread. If you think it helps you, we can mark it as unresolved, but the solution will be updated on GitHub, not here.

Kind regards,
Joost

Hello @joostvandevijver ,

Another week passed and there’s no solution available, not here or on GitHub.

Considering we’re having orders failing, I would do anything to get your eyes on this bug….

Anything you can do to help here?

Thanks

We’re also seeing the same issue, especially in the past week or so.

This is marked as resolved but it is not giving a SOLUTION. Payments are still canceled and people lose money. If you don’t want to cancel the successful payment if PayPal fails to save the vault (if this is OK to you) solution is given on this forum: https://holest.com/forum/general-product-support/5370-could-not-process-order-because-it-was-not-possible-to-save-the-payment-on-paypal.html

There needs to be some kind of a real solution to this as it’s seriously interfering with business, not just a workaround.

@niklasinpsyde
@holest

We also habe this Problem coniously.

I would suggest the team to implement a “switch” or Setting that would do something like:

If the Payment Contract cant be Saved, just to a normal “Single Payment” and put the Subscription on Manual Renewal

This would be not only a good workaround, it would also be a generally good idea.

@pogotime – yes exactly

The recent focus has been on more widespread stability issues but the subscription integration will soon be improved in several aspects, spread over the next few updates.
This includes a setting to choose between different signup behaviors and notifications for the buyer and merchant in case a payment method could not be saved. Essentially what @pogotime suggests but with more options.

The change provided by @holest should be fine for preventing the immediate order failures in favor of ‘silent failures’ with the first renewal as I’m not sure the user will receive a notification about it.
In any case, we must ask for just a little more patience as there are a lot of new things to come.

Kind regards,
Niklas

To be honest the last reply irritates me a bit as this is the official replacement for the previous plugin. How can it be in a state where things are still not ready and it causes basic issues?

Hello,

It has been quite some time since our last communication, so we will mark this thread as resolved. Please open a new thread if you are still facing issues or have questions that you need us to answer.

Kind regards,
Andreas