Why is my PayPal Express Checkout payment pending?

[angelsinuniform]

So I have a customer who made a purchase today and used PayPal express checkout, and the payment is stating “pending”. Not sure why or not do I understand as to this is the first time this has happened. My PayPal is setup with the same email address as Shopify. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,

[Hilary]

Hi, @angelsinuniform!

Sorry to hear you've been having some troubles with your PayPal payment. Happy to help. Is this your first order through the PayPal gateway, or have you successfully received payment through PayPal for previous orders?

If it is your first order using PayPal, from your Shopify admin, Under Settings > Payments > PayPal Express Checkout section, please confirm that your setup is complete. 

Next, please confirm the PayPal account is a business account. This is a common issue. Once that is confirmed, please check the email inbox associated with this email address and see if you have a confirmation email waiting from PayPal. This may be required to finalize the setup and start accepting payments. 

Lastly, did you receive the order before or after completing the account setup? If you received it before completing the setup, it can take another order using PayPal to come through to trigger that the setup has been complete. I'll also share our FAQ page on common issues with setting up PayPal. 

If this is not your first order using PayPal, how long as the order been stuck in a pending status for in the Shopify admin? If you have successfully received the money in your PayPal account, you will need to manually mark the orders as paid on the Shopify side if it's been more than 48 hours.

Let me know how this goes!

[angelsinuniform]

Hello thank you for responding. Yes this is my first order with PayPal. So I checked under settings and where the PayPal is all I see is deactivate PayPal settings so I’m assuming it is setup and yes it was after because I thought I had PayPal up with my business but I didn’t but I told the customer to cancel the order and order again and it’s still saying pending. When I click on capture orders and collect payment it wants me to put my information in and pay the amount for the order. I also made sure it’s a business account with PayPal and also this the order was placed this afternoon around 3:20 p.m.

[Hilary]

Of course, happy to help troubleshoot with you, and sorry to hear the payment is still pending. Thanks for your detailed answers. It can take up to 48 hours for a PayPal payment to process once the order is placed, and for the pending status to update. Is it still showing as pending? 

When you log into your PayPal account, are you seeing the payment for the order? As in, have you collected the money on the PayPal side?

Once I have more information, we can take it from there. Look forward to hearing back!

[angelsinuniform]

Sorry for the delay I was working but no I haven’t received any money as of yet. I marked the item as paid which probably was a big mistake. I asked PayPal about the payment but they said it wasn’t showing any activity on their end.

[Hilary]

Thanks for the follow up. If you have not already done so, I would not advise shipping the order until you have received the payment. In the future, I would also not advise marking the order as paid until you have received the payment, but no worries, PayPal should still be able to help you track down this payment. Did you give them the specific transaction information for the order when you spoke with them?

The best thing to do at this stage will be to reach out to PayPal directly to have them help you track down the payment. Providing them with as much information as possible about the order will make tracking down the payment easier. You can find the order details by opening the order from the Orders page, scrolling down to the order Timeline. Clicking the black arrows next to each timeline event will open a drop down with more detailed information about the order's transaction details: 

PayPal will likely request the email address the payment was sent to, as well as the authorization number from the order timeline. They may request different details as well. PayPal is the best team equipped to help you in tracking down this payment. 

If you think there is a chance the payment may have been sent to a different email address, you can reach out to our Shopify Support team, as we will be able to help confirm the email address that the payment for the order was sent to. We are not able to provide account-specific support on the Community at this time. In order to look at your account and this order in detail, you'll have to follow the provided link, login and connect with our Support team via live chat, email or a callback request. 

Have you received any further payments through PayPal since this order? Have you been able to receive them? Let us know how this goes. 

[angelsinuniform]

I have reached out to them and they are telling me to reach out to Shopify because it’s not showing a pending payment

[Hilary]

Thanks for the reply and letting us know you've spoken to PayPal. Sorry to hear they've been unable to track down the payment.

From here we'll need to look at your account and the order in detail. Since we’re not able to provide account-specific support via the Community at this time, the best next step is to reach out to our Support team directly. Our Support team can look at this order and payment in detail and help determine what has happened. Please follow the link to Contact us, login to your store, and follow the prompts to create a Support request through live chat, email, or callback request. 

Thanks for your patience and troubleshooting with me here on the Community. Hopefully this can be resolved soon. 

[Udude]

I’m having the exact same issue. Did you find a solution to this ?