Hello! I just made my first sale on Shopify apparently… However, the girl who ordered paid through PayPal pay in 4. PayPal charge her twice, but would not go through to the completed order screen. On my end, it says she abandoned her cart. She has sent me proof of the PayPal order going through twice and that my website won’t go past the pay now screen… Please help! I do not know if it is a problem on my end or her end.
I made a quick 50 cent listing and purchased it twice myself just to see how the checkout process would go if I used a card versus if I used PayPal and both worked for me… Her order however, was $935 so I do not know if that possibly was why it was having issues? i’m having my customer speak with PayPal to deal with her being charged, but the order is not going through…
Hi! @DisasterfulGirl
Congrats on your first sale — but I know this situation can be stressful.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- If the order shows as “abandoned” in Shopify, that usually means Shopify never received a confirmation from PayPal, even if the customer was charged. So from your store’s point of view, the transaction didn’t finish properly.
- PayPal “Pay in 4” can sometimes pre-authorize or temporarily hold funds without completing the charge if something goes wrong during checkout — especially on larger orders like $935. It may look like she was charged twice, but it could just be pending holds.
- Since it worked fine with your smaller test orders, the issue may be related to PayPal’s internal risk checks or a timeout during payment processing.
What you can do now:
- Ask your customer to double-check with PayPal and request a refund or release of any pending amounts.
- In Shopify, go to Orders > Abandoned Checkouts, find her cart, and send her a fresh cart recovery link so she can try again (maybe with a different method).
- Keep an eye on your PayPal transaction history too — if one of the payments does go through, it may show up there even if Shopify doesn’t catch it.