"PayPal account optional" not working

[viralise]

Dear Forum

I have activated the function to make PayPal accounts optional for my customers.

However, this does not always work.

It seems to depend on a web browser cookie.

If my customer has previously been logged in to PayPal this works as intended. He/she gets the choice whether to log in or to pay as guest.

But if my customer has not used PayPal before he/she is forced to create an account and is not presented with the option to pay as a guest.

Please fix this bug PayPal.

It's quite silly to be required to create an account in order to be able to pay as guest.

/ Joakim *removed*, Viralise Sweden

[viralise]

This does not seem to affect all countries.

If the user selects the country Norway (or I pass along country=NO) this happens.

Change the country to Sweden (SE) and the option to pay as guest magically appears.

If the user has been logged in previously, there is no problem paying as guest even if Norway is chosen.

[TimSki]

Hi,

I have the same issue.  Bizarrely in Chrome the user gets the option to pay without creating a paypal account.  However in both FireFox and IE they HAVE to use a paypal account.  I've deleted cookies etc but to no avail.

This is incredibly frustrating !

[viralise]

I have reported this to PayPal's Merchant Technical Support.

Let's hope for a prompt fix.

[jaxLA]

It won't even give me the option to allow buyers to pay with another method.  This is creating some major problems as I need this now!  Hope we get a response soon.  

[viralise]

I have recorded a screencast showing the problem in detail:

PayPal problem screencast

I have sent this to PayPal Merchant Technical Services today.

Two weeks after I reported this problem to Merchant Services I got my first response from them.

"We apologize for the delay in the response. Is this still an issue?"

[PCSG]

I've been having this same issue. In my case, the "Paypal Account optional" option in our Paypal account is set to "on", and the default payment method is PayPal Payments Standard. But, the following happens when a customer clicks on the "pay online" button located in our payment portal.

1. While on a desktop computer, if the customer's public IP address is from within the continental USA, when they are redirected toPaypal they see two options: "pay with a Paypal account", and "Pay now, create an account later". Clicking on the latter, shows a form requesting customer's name, full address, email, etc. After they have entered all the required information, they are redirected to another page to enter their credit card details and submit payment.

2. While on a desktop computer, if the customer's public IP address is from Puerto Rico, when they are redirected to Paypal they see these two options: "pay with a Paypal account", and "create a Paypal account".

3. If the customer is using a mobile device, they are redirected to the mobile version of Paypal where they see the options: "Pay with Paypal" and "Pay with a Card", no matter where their public IP address is from (continental USA or Puerto Rico). Upon selecting "Pay with a Card", the customer only needs to enter credit card information, zip code, and email before submitting payment.

This has been tested with Safari (on a Mac), Chrome, and Firefox. The response from Paypal support was a joke. It basically says that with Paypal Payments Standard customers may sometimes be unable to pay as guests. But if I upgrade to the Pro version, it should work as advertised. Great, I asked for a fix and received a sales pitch!!!

[wenvet]

I have had customers complaining about the same issue. Come on Paypal, get this fixed!