No Order Received but Paypal Pending Authorization

[KimMVH]

Hi, 

We have a Paypal payment PENDING AUTHORIZATION over at PayPal. The customer ordered a few items but we have not yet received an order notification. The customer emailed us asking about her order. We never would have known she placed an order if she had not emailed us, so we looked on PayPal and there was a Pending Authorization for payment on there from this customer. It still states pending since November 24th. This payment authorization still show pending today. PayPal contacted me and asked me to fulfill the order but I have no order on the Shopify platform. I look at the pending payment and have option to "capture" payment. Not sure if I should do that? Can someone help? I have reached out to Paypal but no luck yet. Thank you. 

[StephensWorld]

Hey @KimMVH 

I think you're having the same issue as discussed in this thread: https://community.shopify.com/c/payments-shipping-and/paypal-express-checkout-stuck-pending/td-p/783... 

I'm guessing this is probably the first order you've had via PayPal? 

If so, it looks like the solution (for future orders) is to deactivate your "PayPal Express Checkout" payment gateway, and then reactivate it. When you go to reactive it, it'll prompt you to login to your PayPal account in order to sync the PayPal account with your Shopify store successfully. 

In the future (after deactivating and then reactivating) it should work without issue. 

In the meantime - for this specific order you're working with - you'll probably have to handle it manually, or else you can cancel it on PayPal's end, and then have the customer re-place their order after you've deactivated+reactivated your PayPal payment gateway on Shopify. 

I hope the above helps! 🙂

Cheers,

Stephen

[KimMVH]

Hi, thanks for your input. I have used Paypal as an ecommerce seller for 20+ years now. This has never happened to us. 

[StephensWorld]

Shopify hasn't been around for 20 years, so I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing here. 

If you've had orders on this specific Shopify store using PayPal before, and have never had any issues (specifically with orders via Shopify, using PayPal), then I would probably recommend cancelling the order on PayPal's end and then having the customer re-place their order. Especially if you've had other PayPal orders within a couple days of when this customer tried their order. 

If you know PayPal is working for other customers on your specific Shopify store, then cancelling and having them re-place their order is the way to go.