Question
- Why am I still not seeing the option to pay by debit or credit card, after Enabling PayPal Guest Payments?
- Why does PayPal show the "Create an account" button rather than the "Pay with credit or debit card" button?
- My students are unable to see the option to pay by credit card without logging into a PayPal account
- PayPal is still requiring my customer to signup or login during checkout
Solution
Enabling Guest Checkout within your PayPal account settings will allow your users the option to check out using a debit or credit card, without the need to login to a PayPal account. However, in some circumstances, your users will not see the option to make their purchases without using or creating a PayPal account.
Whether your users will have the option to checkout with using or creating a PayPal account depends on a variety of details risk factors, including (but not limited to): their location, purchase history and details, cookies, IP address, and more.
For this reason, the guest checkout option is never guaranteed for each transaction.
Examples:
Below you'll see a few of the common factors that might contribute to why one of your users isn't seeing the option to pay with a credit or debit card:
Locale/IP address
- Guest checkout is not available for all locations, as some countries are required by PayPal to have a PayPal account before making a transaction. That means that if the IP address of the buyer is determined by the system to be in a location where "PayPal account optional" is not available, they will need to create a PayPal account.
- If the user is attempting to make a purchase from a location that is not their home country, they may be required to sign in to make a payment from a verified PayPal account.
Email Address
- If the email address that the buyer is providing is linked to an existing PayPal account, the option to checkout as a guest will not be available (since PayPal has already established that the buyer has an existing account).
Cookies
- PayPal as a business does make an effort to create new accounts. By using cookies on the user's browser, PayPal will check to see if the buyer has used the guest checkout multiple times. If so, they will remove the option and require the buyer to create a PayPal account. Since this is tracked through cookies, clearing the cache within their browser should restore the guest checkout option for the buyer.
Important Considerations
- If you have not walked through the steps to enable this option within PayPal, please see How to Enable PayPal Guest Payments During Checkout, before looking into the solutions above.