Credit/debit card payments by PayPal Trouble

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment

Topic summary

Checkout failures occur when using PayPal’s “Credit and debit card payments” option (guest card checkout). After entering card details and consenting to PayPal’s privacy statement, buyers see: “Something went wrong. We’ll take you back to checkout so you can try again.”

The store owner reinstalled PayPal, disabled/re-enabled the method, and ran test purchases; the error persisted. A spreadsheet was attached as evidence, and a store link was shared for replication. Multiple merchants reported the same issue.

Shopify staff advised contacting PayPal directly for error specifics and reviewing the order timeline payment details to diagnose failed attempts (help article linked).

Latest update: A merchant reports PayPal Support attributed the failures to country-based policy restrictions. Specifically, this PayPal card option can’t be used for domestic payments within the same country as the PayPal account. Example given: a PayPal account registered in Colombia can accept international payments but not payments from Colombian buyers.

Status: No Shopify-side fix confirmed. Suggested next steps: verify PayPal country rules for your account, test domestic vs. international checkouts, and work with PayPal on alternatives or eligibility.

Summarized with AI on December 25. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hey, Shopify Family.

I need help with my website’s checkout. I wanted to buy one of the products I offer on my online store to assess their quality. When I got to the complete order page, I chose “Credit and debit card payments” by PayPal, because I also wanted to test it since I had recently added it. However, after filling out the card details, writing my phone number, checking the PayPal privacy statement box, and pressing the Pay Now button, I received the following message: “Something went wrong. We’ll take you back to checkout so you can try again.”

I have deactivated credit/debit card payments by PayPal, tried to make a test purchase, and even removed PayPal as a payment provider for my Shopify website, and then did it all over again. The problem still persists and I honestly don’t know what to do. This harms my business’ purchase rate and I am certainly losing a lot of money while having this problem.

In the attached spreadsheet you can see what’s happening. Can you help me?

2 Likes
2

You can find the store at www.streetstylestatement.com and see if it also happens to you, please.

3

I have the same problem, have you solved it yet?

4

I have the same problem

5

Hey I got the same problem, was this solved?

6

Hi, everyone! If you are having trouble with your PayPal payments it’s best to contact PayPal for more help. They will have the most information on this error and what’s happening at checkout. You can also learn more about these payments by reviewing your order timeline payment details for the orders where this happened.

7

Well, seems to be that is a restriction due the countries in the Paypal’s policy, that’s what I got from the Paypal Support Team, and it can’t be used for payments inside the same country of the account. For example, if your Paypal account is from Colombia, you can receive payments from other countries where Paypal is available, but you can’t receive payments from Colombia. That’s the explanation of this issue.