Credit Card Payments no longer work

You are using versions of WordPress and s2Member that are almost three years out of date. You need to update them asap — and not just to get this working.

Yes, I understand that the site needs to be updated. But in the mean time, can you explain why would a payment by way of a Paypal account work and a credit card payment not?

The issue happens in step 2 of the paypal checkout process as well. I would think that if a Paypal payment works flawlessly then a credit card payment throught he same checkout process should as well.

If that’s not the case then it must have something to do with the original call to the API. Is it something small that I can manually change in the existing files until I have time to update the site?

I have no idea. But I can say that, until you update, no developer is going to be prepared to debug this unless you promise to pay them a lot of money.

As developer I would first update all the site before to do any bughunting. Will save tons of time both to me and the client.

I am experiencing the same thing on two of my websites. I noticed it 3 days ago, about the same time you posted this. Both my sites are completely up to date.

I only realised that this was happening when I launched a new website for a client with 600 members three days ago. Complaints started coming in thick and fast. I was baffled as the payment gateways were identical to the first website that had been running for a few years (apparently without problem). When I looked into it the first website also did not process PayPal guest payments using debit credit cards.

I don’t know how long this has been happening as customers using the first website are more likely to set up subscriptions using a PayPal account and no problems had been reported to me.

I have asked for tech support from PayPal and then came across this post. If you find a solution I would be hugely grateful if you would let me know. I will look into the API logs but am actually stuck in a pretty remote location and travelling at the moment.

Customer experience..

Customer arrives on a S2Member pro form (no PayPal pro account)

Enters registration details and clicks the PayPal icon at the bottom of the form (the form shortcode is PayPal only)

Customer is directed to PayPal website. The option to pay as a guest is offered by PayPal

Customer choses to pay as a guest using a credit or debit card

Customer is directed to complete their card and billing details

Customer clicks submit.

Nothing happens. The screen may ‘blink’ but ultimately nothing seems to happen. Customers may click submit multiple times but nothing happens.

I have tested this myself using various cards on both websites (importantly, cards which are not linked to my PayPal account) – same effect seen

Settings in PayPal seem ok

@fsawebmaster,

What version of WP are you running?

My log looks ok to me….

[ Moderator note: code fixed. Please wrap code in the backtick character or use the code button. ]

log for PayPal API
gareth davies   20:34
To: xxxx
xxxxxx
LOG ENTRY: Sat Jan 9th, 2016 @ precisely 8:20 pm UTC
PHP v5.4.42 :: WordPress v4.4.1 :: s2Member v151218 :: s2Member Pro v151218
Memory 14.14 MB :: Real Memory 14.50 MB :: Peak Memory 14.47 MB :: Real Peak Memory 14.50 MB
palynology.org/retired-no-access-to-palynology-1-year-15-00/
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/46.0.2486.0 Safari/537.36 Edge/13.10586
-------- Input vars: ( Sat Jan 9, 2016 8:20:58 pm UTC ) --------
array (
  'METHOD' => 'SetExpressCheckout',
  'RETURNURL' => 'https://palynology.org/retired-no-access-to-palynology-1-year-15-00/?s2p-option&s2member_paypal_xco=s2member_pro_paypal_checkout_return',
  'CANCELURL' => 'https://palynology.org/retired-no-access-to-palynology-1-year-15-00/?s2p-option&s2member_paypal_xco=s2member_pro_paypal_checkout_cancel',
  'PAGESTYLE' => 'paypal',
  'LOCALECODE' => '',
  'NOSHIPPING' => '1',
  'SOLUTIONTYPE' => 'Sole',
  'LANDINGPAGE' => 'Billing',
  'ALLOWNOTE' => '0',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_PAYMENTACTION' => 'Sale',
  'MAXAMT' => '15.00',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_DESC' => 'Retired - No access to Palynology 1 Year: $15.00',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_CUSTOM' => 'palynology.org',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_CURRENCYCODE' => 'USD',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_ITEMAMT' => '15.00',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_TAXAMT' => '0.00',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_AMT' => '15.00',
  'L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_QTY0' => '1',
  'L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_NAME0' => 'Retired - No access to Palynology 1 Year: $15.00',
  'L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_NUMBER0' => '1::357 D',
  'L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_AMT0' => '15.00',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_SHIPTONAME' => 'Faby Cano-Davies',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_SHIPTOSTREET' => '',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_SHIPTOCITY' => '',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_SHIPTOSTATE' => '',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_SHIPTOCOUNTRYCODE' => 'US',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_SHIPTOZIP' => '',
  'EMAIL' => 'xxxxxx',
  'VERSION' => '71.0',
  'USER' => 'txxxxxxxx',
  'PWD' => 'xxxxxxxx/',
  'SIGNATURE' => 'xxxxxxxx/',
)
-------- Output string/vars: ( Sat Jan 9, 2016 8:20:59 pm UTC ) --------
TOKEN=xxxxx13990X&TIMESTAMP=2016%2d01%2d09T20%3a20%3a59Z&CORRELATIONID=ccac08824ab3d&ACK=Success&VERSION=71%2e0&BUILD=18308778
array (
  'TOKEN' => 'EC-7Fxxxxxx13990X',
  'TIMESTAMP' => '2016-01-09T20:20:59Z',
  'CORRELATIONID' => 'cxxxxxxxxx3d',
  'ACK' => 'Success',
  'VERSION' => '71.0',
  'BUILD' => '18308778',
? 2016 Microsoft Terms Privacy & cookies Developers English (United Kingdom)

OK, so it doesn’t seem to be the bug that afflicted WP 4.4, because you’ve updated (unless that was not fixed in 4.4.1).

Your memory looks remarkably low. I’d suggest trying the server scanner and see what this reports.

No errors on server scanner.

No response from PayPal with regards my technical support ticket.

No idea if this is a PayPal issue or an S2 issue.

Stuck with a brand new membership site and no way to take payments without a PayPal account. Increasingly unhappy clients and I have no idea how to solve this. Any help gratefully recieved.

Does the short code look ok?

[s2Member-Pro-PayPal-Form level=”1″ ccaps=”” desc=”Retired – No access to Palynology 1 Year: $15.00″ ps=”paypal” lc=”” cc=”USD” dg=”0″ ns=”1″ custom=”palynology.org” ta=”0″ tp=”0″ tt=”D” ra=”15.00″ rp=”<?php echo $trial_days; ?>” rt=”D” rr=”BN” rrt=”” rra=”2″ accept=”paypal” accept_via_paypal=”paypal” coupon=”” accept_coupons=”0″ default_country_code=”” captcha=”0″ /]

Try this:

[s2Member-Pro-PayPal-Form level=”1″ ccaps=”” desc=”Retired – No access to Palynology 1 Year: $15.00″ ps=”paypal” lc=”” cc=”USD” dg=”0″ ns=”1″ custom=”palynology.org” ta=”0″ tp=”0″ tt=”D” ra=”15.00″ rp=”<?php echo $trial_days; ?>” rt=”D” rr=”BN” rrt=”” rra=”2″ accept=”paypal,visa,mastercard,amex,discover,maestro,solo”, accept_via_paypal=”paypal,visa,mastercard,amex,discover,maestro,solo” coupon=”” accept_coupons=”0″ default_country_code=”” captcha=”0″ /]

Difference is in accepted payment methods. Still Paypal may require buyer to create an account.

If this don’t works, you may try to set also Stripe and to accept cards there.

@krmunch

I tried that as well and it made no difference. Once the user is directed to PayPal and then clicks the “pay by debit/credit card” button. They fill the form out, hit Continue and the form just blinks.

This is screaming to me me that it’s a Paypal issue, considering payment with a Paypal account works. And…in any case, all Paypal should need to function properly is a valid API request (no matter what version of WordPress, S2Member, etc is installed)

I also inspected the code to see if there were an javascript errors and saw no errors.

@fsawebmaster if you solve this I would be VERY GRATEFUL if you post your solution. I will do the same. I am still debugging and have hit the same dead-ends.

@krumch

Pretty sure that those accepted payment methods only apply if you have a PayPal Pro account as they are designed to have the details added on the website side rather than PayPal.

Thanks for the Stripe tip. Looking into that now.

@lamarant

Will do.

Some positive news from PayPal. Their technical support people sent me the following in response to my ticket…..

After investigating the issue further, express checkout payment with debit/credit card page not submitting is currently a known issue in PayPal. Our internal team is currently looking into this issue. Apparently, it only happens to the new checkout page. In order to solve this issue, you will need to use the classic checkout page. Do you mind if the payment is redirected to the classic checkout page? If you don’t, I will get our internal team to solve this issue for you. I look forward to your response.

Thank you! I will follow up with them as well. Do you mind sending me your paypal support ticket number so I can reference it? They have been very unresponsive with my requests. I looked for a way to switch to classic checkout but I guess they have to that on the back end.