These instructions although geared towards fixing PayPal issues in Prestashop they can be applied to other situations and software platforms where PayPal is used as a payment gateway.
Symptoms
- PayPal payments failing and showing an error to the client
- Orders with no products (This might also
- Back Office not creating orders after successful payment
- An error is returned but with no information (ie not populated)
- Nothing is returned from PayPal
Causes and Fixes
- IP blocked by paypal
- ip blocked because you are on a shared IP and some other people are doing fraudulent behaviour so the whole IP gets blocked
- paypal do block IP addresses but usually for 24 hours
- change IP
- Contact PayPal MTS and have the ban lifted
- Network transport issues to paypal
- try changing IP
- use a different network
- Server is still running SSL3
- disable SSL3
- SSL certificate might need installing
- I thing a SSL certificate is required to be installed when using PayPal API, i dont think it is required for IPN
- Using an old API
- upgrade the API you are using
- PayPal is not configured to accept the currency your software platform (ie prestashop) is using
- configure the currencies correctely
- sellinux = enabled
- sirandrewdavis mentions the SELinux=enforcing (security enhanced LINUX) was causing his problem and changing it to SELINUX=disabled fixed his problem
- Number of connections from a single IP to paypal has been exhausted
- wait 10 minutes
- change providers
- get a dedicated server or VPS
- get a dedicated IP (this might not work on a shared server because the underlying services of the server will still uses the shared IP)
- cURL is not enabled
- enable cURL as it is required
- PayPal credentials are not configured correctely
- re-enter all your details
- Your shop is not in maintenance mode (if no-one can access your site, the paypal site won't be able to either). (Presta-Changeo Article)
- There is password protection on your site (if no-one can access your site, the paypal site won't be able to either). (Presta-Changeo Article)
- Make sure your paypal account is verified, otherwise transactions don't get automatically approved and prestashop will show a payment error (Presta-Changeo Article)
- The most common Sandbox mode problem with the paypal module is that the orders are not showing up on the shop. (Presta-Changeo Article)
- The reason for that is the paypal module is currently set up to create orders only if the response it gets from the paypal site is "Completed", however, when running in Sandbox mode, paypal sends a response of "Pending".
We have read some documentation about changing the sandbox account to send a "Completed" response, but even after trying that, payments still appeared as pending.
- The reason for that is the paypal module is currently set up to create orders only if the response it gets from the paypal site is "Completed", however, when running in Sandbox mode, paypal sends a response of "Pending".
-
Your default currency in Prestashop doesn't match your paypal currency. (Presta-Changeo Article)
-
Payment is made using Echeck or other methods that require a longer time to clear. (Presta-Changeo Article)
-
Paypal decides they need to investigate the transaction. (Presta-Changeo Article)
- Outgoing connections are blocked by your hoster (this is rare)
- Client inputted data can cause 'Back Office not creating orders after successful payment' (not confirmed)
- The customers paypal address not having states, but Prestashop being configured to require a State
- The customers paypal profile does not have a phone number, but Prestashop by default requires all addresses to have a phone number
- The module has a defective notify URL depending on the PS version
- The prestashop product name has characters that Paypal do not accept
- The customers address used in Prestashop is not a valid address, and Paypal rejects it
- You are testing in maintenance mode. You cannot do this, the IPN will be rejected by your store (since the store is 'offline')
- I need to have the site live while I check this or the payment modules won't be able to receive the post backs... so in effect I'd get a "false positive".
- Too many IPN request in a certain timeframe causing a temporay ban
- Faulty or Old code
- Other modules or software is blocking paypal working
- PHP version incompatabilities
Other Solutions
- Clear and Disable all of the Prestashop Caches - code errors might be lurking in the cache
- Upgrade to the latest version of Prestashop and the PayPal Module
- Repair the database - See my article New orders not showing on Orders Tab or orders have missing products for synchronizing/repairing the database
- check log files for errors
- change IP
- tracert the network path to PayPal
- check PHP error log
- PayPal might be having a server outage - This is rare but has been pointed out that it happened in this old thread
Links
The following are all links i have used to put this article together.
- HELP Orders Have No Products - OUT - 1.6.0.11 [7 Jan 2015] - PrestaShop - This shows an example of some adding their own debugging code into the paypal module that POSTs the error to Prestashop's inbuilt error logging system via PrestaShopLogger::addLog()
- Back Office not creating orders after successful payment - PayPal - PrestaShop - Mentions inputting dodgy addresses or wiered characters can prevent orders being created, testing in maintenance mode will fail and the number of IPN requests can cause a temporary ban and code fixes to the prestashop paypal module v1.3.7 / PS 1.6.0.9
- Most orders do not appear in back office - Configuring & using PrestaShop - PrestaShop - faulty code dues to an upgrade, there were incompatibilites
- Fixing Paypal Problems in Prestashop - Presto-Changeo - Some common solutions to paypal not working
- Akensai Ping Online/Offline PHP Script - The base script used to check visability of PayPal servers
- PayPal Error occurred! - PayPal - PrestaShop - This article identifies an issue with the cookies created by the PayPal module. It tell you how it was found, the method of debuggin and a solution. A further solution in this thread was to update the plugin because PayPal removed the use of SSL3
- PayPal SSL 3.0 (POODLE) Microsite - This is the offical documentation about from PayPal removing SSL3. As of January 12, 2015 at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Standard Time (PST), PayPal has discontinued support for Secure Socket Layer version 3 (SSL 3.0). This action was taken to help keep customer accounts secure from the POODLE vulnerability. If you have not already done so, you will need to update from SSL 3.0 to the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. The following links provide detailed instructions, including a Merchant Response Guide available in 27 languages, to assist you in making the update from SSL 3.0 to TLS. Your exact settings may vary.
- PayPal Modification SSL V3 to TLS - PayPal - PrestaShop - A Prestashop forum threa about PayPal disabling SSL3, what it means and what you can do. main
- PayPal Error with no error code! - PayPal - PrestaShop This is the 13 page one, the main theme of the thread is that PayPal blocks IP addresses (with proof) even though Pay Pal denies it.
- page 1 - Paypal is blocking access and gives IP addresses he ran with the Akensai script to verify a connection to paypal; putting the shop on another server allows paypal to work
- page 2 - If you look at the addresses I previously put up earlier in this post it seems that it requires access to them. But specifically it tries to contact api-3t.paypal.com
- page 3 - A simple curl command to https://api-3t.paypal.com/nvp from a shell fails with a 'couldn't connect to host' and all API requests timeout; Responses from PayPal about how they dont block IPs; There is a response about a bad hop on their network dropping packets preventing access to their API endpoints; a response from PayPal about a fault with their servers;
- page 5 - symanski wrote a script utilising the akensai script to test the PayPal server connectivity which can prove connection issues; there is also a larger script from symanski; a description from symanski about what the script is testing and why
- page 7 - mentions about how being on a shared server if another account on the server gets the IP banned because of fraud etc.., your PayPal connections will be banned aswell because it is on the same IP
- page 8 - sirandrewdavis mentions the SELinux=enforcing (security enhanced LINUX) was causing his problem and changing it to SELINUX=disabled fixed his problem
- page 9 - vinylbodyshop says how his hoster added more IPs in to his cluster to allow for more PayPal Connections and that fixed his issue; symanski quaotes how PayPal MTS say that they dont block access to the APIs and that MTS beleiev that it is a router on the internet that is configured to block access which is owned by AT&T or Sprint; leecook quotes his hosting provider recognises they have an issue with their customers accessing PayPal and are working to fix the issue; symanski is quoting PayPal MTS who admit their is an issue with some clients accessing their API servers pointing towards an AT&T or Sprint router causing the issue.
- page 10 - leecook who registered a fault with AT&T has reported that they had put a block on the PayPal addresses and it is now removed; leecook says the outcome of this is that either change your IP address or get who ever is blocking it to unblock it
- page 11 - my cURL test script and why i used it to discover the real server IP address. This will also check if cURL is working
- page 12 - scorpionsworld has re-written the Akensai script to work via AJAX to prevent a timeout error of 500; hansoft mentions about an incompatability setup on PHP
- page 13 - d1bizstop points out that PayPal has disabled the use of SSL3 and that this is what caused his issue.
- blah blah