Why is the PayPal express setup failing in my Shopify store due to email mismatch?

[joanlaura]

I'm a website developer and we are having an issue with shopify - PayPal express setup.   I created the client's shopify store for them with my work email address.  Once the store was ready to launch, we transferred ownership to them and they completed the remaining settings, such as the financial setup.

They wanted to use Paypal express and from their end, everything looked correct.  The owner email on their shopify store matches the email on their PayPal account.  Now we are finding out that:

"As soon as you open a Shopify store, you’re given a Paypal Express Checkout account. Because PayPal requires your email to create the PayPal Express Checkout account, Shopify will share your email with PayPal. You should finish setting up your PayPal account or deactivate PayPal from the Payments setting in your Shopify admin to avoid exposing your email publicly."

The client's recent Paypal express order failed, because the email address on the Paypal store doesn't match my email address (the web developer).  So far the only solution we've received is for the client to put my work email address on their PayPal account and go through the verification process for Paypal accounts.   We have seriously been advised that the client should give me access to their financial payment system, I cannot express how ridiculous the idea is that I who simply created and built their shopify store for them as a service should have access to their financial records.

This is not a safe solution.

[PageFly-Theodor]

Hi @joanlaura ,
This is Theodore from PageFly - Shopify Page Builder App.

Sharing your client's financial information is a serious security risk and should never be done. There are alternative solutions to address the PayPal Express issue:

Deactivate the existing account and set up a new one using the client's email.
Explore alternative payment gateways that don't require linking their personal PayPal account.
Contact Shopify Support for assistance in resolving the issue while maintaining financial security.

Best regards,
Theodore | PageFly

[joanlaura]

We did try de-activating paypal express in the shopify payments setting and re-activating again twice.  Both times, it looks like everything is setup correctly, it even shows the correct owner email linked to Paypal but apparently that's not really the email connecting.

We contacted shopify support and they are the ones who advised we need to add my email address to the client's paypal account since I created the shopify store.