Error 10486 is haunting me.

[C3real]

I’m gonna start this post by giving you some insight.

Right now, about 40/50% of my abandoned checkouts are caused by this PayPal error, 10486. This is a lot of lost orders and money.

I found this very strange, as you can imagine, and I started googling about it, and there’s not a clear explanation about it or about fixing it, neither on Shopify or on other websites.

Now I’m gonna tell you why I know so far, and what I don’t. I know this is an error caused by PayPal Express Checkout and that it’s caused in the Client side. I’m not sure why it’s caused, PayPal website says it’s caused because the customer card was declined, or some other card/money issue, but it just seems too weird to me that there’s that many declined cards.

After some research, I think this is a shared issue, between PayPal and Shopify. It’s both platforms fault in some way.

First, I saw a considerable amount of people on PayPal Support claiming to have this error while their cards were perfectly fine, so it is an inconsistent error with their payment processing system, which is PayPal’s fault.

Shopify’s fault comes after this, because I realized the main reason for these failed payments, caused by PayPal’s error, causing abandoned checkouts is the link redirect.

What do I mean by this? Normally, a failed payment with a card, through PayPal, would redirect you to choose another payment method, within your PayPal account. And usually they choose another card or bank account and the payment goes through.

But that’s not what Shopify does. Shopify redirects you to the Shopify payment page with an error, asking people to try again. And people do try again, 2 or 3 times, but leave after getting the same error over and over again.

So, after this research I tried to find some way to edit the code and change the link redirect, and PayPal even has a specialized page which teaches you do this within your html code. The problem is, I didn’t find any PayPal code in the Shopify’s theme code. Of course, I can have have just missed it, I don’t understand much of html or css, but I don’t think so.

So what am I looking for?
I would like people more expert than me to tell me if this is normal and to give me some extra insight about this matter. And of course, if possible, a way to fix it.

I’m not a total dummie with programming, I’m half-way through a computer science degree, so you can help me in that field if you know a fix for this.

I know it’s a long post, but this is making me lose a lot of potentially customers, so I couldn't just ignore it without making sure I did everything I could to try to fix it.

Thanks to anyone who read all the way through.

[zaminerals]

Hi there! Did anyone ever come back to you on this? And how did you solve this.

[Sophia]

Hi, @C3real and @zaminerals.

Sophia here from Shopify. Welcome to the Shopify Community!

PayPal provides information about each of their error codes here in the API Error Codes developer document. Error 10486 in particular doesn't have much detailed information behind it, though it does appear to be an error caused on the customer's end:

This error code typically indicates that the customer needs to use an alternate payment method. I would advise that your customer contacts PayPal for help with their account in these cases.

[kevinleebr]

Hi Sophia,

I recently have several cases of 10486 with PayPal Express Checkout. Please contact me and I shall send you the details to analyse. 

Regards,

Kevin

[Sophia]

Hi, @kevinleebr!

Sophia here from Shopify. Welcome to the Shopify Community! I've sent you an email so that I can authenticate your account and take a look into the orders you saw the 10486 PayPal error code on. Whenever you get a chance, please send a reply to that email with your .myshopify.com URL and the order details. I'm looking forward to chatting further with you.

[TupaiRevsport]

Hi Sophia,

Today i get my first sale that my customer using Paypal but this same error appears. Can you please take a look at it too. Am pretty sure ive all setup with my store and Paypal Express Checkout.

Thanks and much appreciated.

[Sophia]

Hi, @TupaiRevsport.

Welcome to the Shopify Community!

PayPal's error 10486 indicates a failed payment on the customer's end, so it's suggested that the customer contact PayPal for support with their account. Before this attempted transaction, had you tried testing PayPal? Please let me know if you're getting the same error code when you try to run through a PayPal order with a PayPal account that's different from the one your payouts are directed to.

[bllekshop]

Hi sophia can you please email me i have same problem

my email bllekshop@gmail.com

[Sophia]

Hi, @bllekshop.

Sure thing! I'd be happy to take a look into any error messages appearing on attempted transactions. I've sent you an email and I'll be able to look into the account as soon as I've received your reply. Thank you.

[Yoki_Panji_Bask]

Hi Sophia, 

Can you also send me an email so I can send you the details? I'm having the same problem. Thanks

[Sophia]

Hi, @Yoki_Panji_Bask!

Based on the previous abandoned checkouts I've seen with PayPal error code 10486, the customer needs to contact PayPal regarding the account they've tried to pay with. You can review these details by viewing the payment events from each abandoned checkout under Orders > Abandoned checkouts > History in your admin. 

I would like to ensure that your PayPal gateway is set up correctly and is functioning as expected, so I can absolutely send you an email to investigate further. Have you been able to test PayPal yourself, or have other transactions gone through successfully with the PayPal Express gateway on your store so far?

[goodstufff32]

Hi Sophia I also have the same problem, I just launched a new store and I had 4 orders so far and all of them has failed because of paypal error 10486.

So I decided to test paypal express and it failed on me as well first time it just declined then i chose diffrent payment method and it failed again. The problem is I am testing a facebook ad campaign and it is costing me a lot of cash. This is not a client issue because 4 people's paypal failed including mine. So there must be a bigger issue here.

[Magshop]

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@Sophia wrote:

Hi, @kevinleebr!

Sophia here from Shopify. Welcome to the Shopify Community! I've sent you an email so that I can authenticate your account and take a look into the orders you saw the 10486 PayPal error code on. Whenever you get a chance, please send a reply to that email with your .myshopify.com URL and the order details. I'm looking forward to chatting further with you.

---

Hello,

I have the same issue, pls help.

[Sophia]

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@goodstufff32 wrote:

Hi Sophia I also have the same problem, I just launched a new store and I had 4 orders so far and all of them has failed because of paypal error 10486.

So I decided to test paypal express and it failed on me as well first time it just declined then i chose diffrent payment method and it failed again. The problem is I am testing a facebook ad campaign and it is costing me a lot of cash. This is not a client issue because 4 people's paypal failed including mine. So there must be a bigger issue here.

---

Hi, @goodstufff32.

I'm sorry to hear that you had 4 attempted orders result in PayPal error code 10486. Before or after those 4 orders, did you have any successful transactions processed through the PayPal Express gateway on your store? Have you contacted PayPal regarding the order you attempted?

[Sophia]

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@Magshop wrote:

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@Sophia wrote:

Hi, @kevinleebr!

Sophia here from Shopify. Welcome to the Shopify Community! I've sent you an email so that I can authenticate your account and take a look into the orders you saw the 10486 PayPal error code on. Whenever you get a chance, please send a reply to that email with your .myshopify.com URL and the order details. I'm looking forward to chatting further with you.

---

Hello,

I have the same issue, pls help.

---

Hi, @Magshop!

To clarify, are you seeing PayPal error code 10486, on attempted orders listed under Orders > Abandoned checkout in your admin? Have you been able to test the PayPal Express gateway yourself with a different account than the one your payments are set to go to?

[goodstufff32]

Ok so I found the problem is with paypal and not shopify. After changing
accounts it worked for me. But after 2 weeks it happened again. So I
contacted paypal and within minutes it was fixed

[JeviDeltof]

Hi Sophia I also have the same problem and I'm sure that the PayPal gateway is set up correctly. Can you contact me too, please? (jesus.delatorre@thlink.marketing) Shop: humoshopmx.myshopify.com

Thanks in advance for your support.

[Sophia]

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@JeviDeltof wrote:

Hi Sophia I also have the same problem and I'm sure that the PayPal gateway is set up correctly. Can you contact me too, please? (jesus.delatorre@thlink.marketing) Shop: humoshopmx.myshopify.com

Thanks in advance for your support.

---

Hi, @JeviDeltof!

PayPal error code 10486 indicates that the customer needs to contact PayPal:

Have you tried testing the PayPal gateway with your own account (a personal account, not the one your payouts are directed to)? If you’ve experienced the same error, you can contact PayPal regarding your attempted payment as well.

[CristianH1]

Hi Sophie, i just had the same issue, can you please email me. realfishingreels.com"gmail.com