Shopify automatically took over PayPal processing in October 2024 without user consent, disrupting established payment workflows. Users report they can no longer receive PayPal payments directly—funds now route through Shopify’s system instead.
Key impacts:
Affiliate payments broken (plugins that relied on PayPal funding no longer work)
Automatic payroll deposits disrupted
Manual workarounds now required for tasks that were previously automated
Additional complications:
Setting up “Shopify Balance” can make the situation worse by removing bank accounts and marking them as invalid
Shopify support has been unhelpful, with representatives reportedly unfamiliar with the changes
The only suggested solution is removing Shopify Payments entirely and re-adding PayPal, which may not be viable for all merchants
Current status: The issue remains unresolved. Support has told users to “watch the changelog” for updates from developers, but no concrete fix or opt-out option has been provided. Multiple users are repeatedly contacting support to escalate the need for a solution.
Summarized with AI on October 28.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
Has anyone successfully reversed the Shopify takeover of PayPal processing? When I tried to ask, I was told I could remove Shopify payments as a payment option and that’s the only way to add PayPal back in.
I didn’t consent to this. PayPal is how I fund my payroll bank account. PayPal is the funding I use to pay my affiliates using a plugin on Shopify to do so.
Now, without an option to agree or disagree, I am stuck manually moving money to the payroll account instead of having auto deposits. Instead of one-click payouts, I must now create manual payments to my affiliates or manually fund PayPal.
If this doesn’t make the case for me to source payment processing elsewhere to be able to maintain control over my own finances, I don’t know what does. The principle alone is worth the added fees.
I am having the same problem, I would really love some insight! Paypal is how I manage all of my shopify funds too. Here is a tip, If you haven’t set up “Shopify balance” DONT! I made the mistake thinking maybe it would push the Paypal payments along and instead, it removed my bank account and all my funds are going through shopify balance now and its horrible. I tried ti add my bank account back but now it gets kicked out and says invalid. From what I gather, nobody can tell us why this happened but I found from google searching that something changed and took over in October. That is all I could find though.
I had a similar problem beginning the first of November 2024 all PayPal payments have disappeared didn’t go to PayPal and didn’t go to to my bank account. Contacted help at Shopify and they were useless, they don’t even know their own system.
Currently struggling with this as well! Have you made any progress on this issue? I have contacted support multiple times about it and they keep saying they will tell the devs and for me to keep an eye on the changelog… That’s not a solution! I understand if this is their new default setup, but they need to have a way for us to opt out/manually add paypal express payment (NOT wallet) into the checkout page again via code/app blocks something. Please contact support and tell them we still want a fix for this as often as you can, that’s what I am doing. If I find a solution, I will post it here, anyone who comes across this, please do the same.
