Upgrading to PayPal Order API (2023)

Owned by Jonathan Tew
Last updated: Nov 21, 2023 by Hunter Schaeffer
3 min read

Introduction

This tutorial will walk you through the process of upgrading your PayPal integration to their latest offering.

Benefits

  • Improved checkout experience for customers using a modal instead of a browser redirect

  • Improved analytics tracking because customers are not redirected off domain for PayPal

  • Additional payment options for customers including PayPal PayLater and Venmo

  • Dual Vaulted payment information for credit cards, PayPal, and Venmo

  • Superior subscription rebilling initiated from UltraCart

  • Ability to adjust anything on an auto order paid for with PayPal

  • Better handling of upsell after offers

Restrictions

  • Similar to Apple Pay / Google Pay, whenever a customer initiates a PayPal / Venmo transaction they will not be shown upsells.

Pre-Requisites

This tutorial assumes that you already have:

  1. UltraCart account connected to PayPal

  2. Using a StoreFront Visual Builder based theme for your checkout. We recommend making sure your theme is updated to the latest available version.
    Supported themes are:

    1. Elements - 2.13+

    2. Hero - 1.17+

    3. Jewel - 1.13+

    4. Lifty - 1.15+

    5. Native - 1.12+

    6. Natural VB - 1.12+

    7. Poppy - 1.03+

 

Payment Configuration

Navigate to Configuration → Checkout → Payments. The payment configuration screen should look like the screenshot shown below. Click on the Upgrade button to begin the connection process.

The next screen will prompt you to connect UltraCart to your PayPal account. Enter in your PayPal email address and country, then click Continue as shown below.

Now you will be prompted to login to your PayPal account.

Next you want to select “Use existing business account” and click Next

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: After upgrading to the new API, I am not seeing Venmo payment button appear with the rest of the PayPal Payment buttons, why is that?

A: Venmo has to come later in the checkout in the ‘Options’ page. It appears in the options page because Venmo requires that all the address information be collected by the checkout, before the payment is initiated.

 

Q: I am seeing the ‘PayPal’ and ‘Pay Later’ stacked in the shopping cart page, why is that?

A: Those buttons appear stacked, because they are a single widget element that is injected into the checkout by PayPal.

 

Related Documentation

PayPal API Transaction Responses: https://developer.paypal.com/api/nvp-soap/errors/