Hi @honeyloudlr
That’s right, to fully utilize the Vaulting feature, PayPal requires that your business account has Reference Transactions enabled.
Unfortunately, this requirement is only mentioned in the documentation and not directly in the plugin.
But please note that the plugin settings are currently being updated and the setting for the Vaulting feature will be improved in the near future.
That being said, without Reference Transactions enabled, Vaulting can still be enabled, but it may not be possible to save a PayPal account in the Vault, which would prevent automatic renewal payments.
Getting approved for Reference Transactions is not always easy. The best way to go about it is to either follow?the guide in the documentation?or reach out to?PayPal Merchant Support?and ask them to enable Reference Transactions for your subscription-based business.
Since PayPal has certain requirements for Reference Transactions to be enabled, the development team is currently working on a new feature to implement “PayPal Subscriptions”, which will allow for automatic subscription renewal payments through PayPal without the need for Reference Transactions.
Although “PayPal Subscriptions” may not be as flexible as Vaulting, it will support subscription applications for everyone using PayPal Payments in conjunction with the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin. This new feature is still in development, but expected to be available around the end of Q1.
However, until the new functionality is available, the only option for using PayPal with automatically renewing subscriptions is to have Reference Transactions enabled.
I hope this provides a clearer understanding of the technical requirements. If you have any doubts or further questions, please do not hesitate to let us know.
Thanks!
Kind regards,
Niklas
