Question
- Why are my students seeing "an error has occurred" on my PayPal checkout?
- My PayPal checkout is showing an error message
Solution
There are many reasons why a student may encounter an error message while using the PayPal checkout - they could be seeing an error due to insufficient funds, a processing issue or outage on PayPal's side, the student's bank blocking the purchase for security reasons, or a number of other reasons.
To figure out what might be causing the error, try these troubleshooting steps:
- Check PayPal's Status Page to see if there were any recorded outages during the time your student tried to make their purchase
- Ask your student to verify that the error was not due to insufficient funds or blocked for security reasons by their bank
- Ask the student to review and disable any browser extensions or plug-ins installed that may block the script from running and try purchasing again
- Review your Paypal integration in Thinkific and PayPal account to confirm your account information is correct. Ensure that your Paypal email and Merchant ID match, and there are no spaces before or after the Merchant ID
- Verify that your course title does not contain emojis
If the above troubleshooting steps are unsuccessful, we recommend reaching out to PayPal directly.
Important Considerations
- Course titles that contain emojis cannot be processed by PayPal due to their character restrictions. If you have a course title containing an emoji, you will need to remove the emoji to re-process the transaction
- PayPal is only available for one-time transactions, so any subscription or plan-priced courses on your site will not be available to purchase via PayPal
- You will need to be logged in as the Site Owner to verify your account information