PayPal Payments offers two ways to accept credit card payments:
- Standard Card Payments – These payments display a branded Debit or Credit Card button and have a pre-built user experience.
- Advanced Credit and Debit Card Payments (Advanced Card Processing) – This method provides a fully customizable user experience.
Advanced Card Processing
↑ Back to topAdvanced Card Processing offers fully customizable “hosted fields” on your website, allowing you to accept credit card payments while keeping your site’s branding consistent. These hosted fields can be styled with your website’s theme or custom CSS.
Available for business accounts in select countries, this solution enables your customers to make debit and credit card payments without requiring a PayPal account. With Vaulting, customers can store their card details for future purchases or subscription renewals.
Note:
If you don’t have a PayPal business account yet or haven’t been evaluated, you can sign up for the Advanced Credit and Debit Card features on PayPal’s website. For the countries where this feature is available, see PayPal’s documentation on Advanced credit and debit country and currency availability.
Advanced Card Payments vs Standard Card Payments
↑ Back to topThe Advanced Card Processing offers enhanced functionality compared to the standard credit card smart button. Here are some examples:
- Users can pay with credit cards without requiring a PayPal account for every application.
- More streamlined checkout experience through native-looking “hosted fields” integration with no PayPal branding.
- Fully customizable card fields.
- Fraud Protection gives you the insight and control you need to balance chargebacks and declines better. Included with Advanced Checkout at no extra cost.
- Advanced Card Processing supports Vaulting, letting your customers save their credit cards for faster, easier subsequent checkouts or automatic subscription renewals without requiring Reference Transactions.
- Supports Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) as required in the European Economic Area (EEA) and other 3D Secure contingencies.
- In some markets, lower transaction fees compared to regular PayPal-branded credit card payments.
Signing up for advanced credit and debit card features
↑ Back to topAdvanced credit and debit card functionality requires that your business account be evaluated and approved by PayPal. You automatically initiate the signup when connecting with the onboarding wizard via Activate PayPal button when selecting the Advanced Card Processing option.
PayPal may request more information about your business when you sign up for advanced card payments.
Sandbox accounts must follow the same sign-up process to activate advanced card functionality: PayPal documentation: Enable your account for advanced debit and credit card processing.
Activate Advanced Card Processing for advanced credit and debit card features
↑ Back to topTo turn on Advanced Card Processing, open the PayPal Payments settings, go to the Payment Methods tab, and enable Advanced Credit and Debit Cards. The standard card button on the checkout page is replaced by card fields that follow your site’s design. With Vaulting turned on, customers can also save their cards for faster checkout next time.
Note:
Advanced Card Processing uses Debit & Credit Cards as its checkout title by default. If you also use Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite or another on-site card gateway, give each one a title that names its processor, so shoppers and store staff can tell which processor handles a payment. In the Payment Methods tab, select Configure for Advanced Credit and Debit Cards, and change the Checkout page title, for example to Debit & Credit Cards (PayPal). For Stripe, see Changing the name in checkout.
Customizing the hosted fields
↑ Back to topThe card fields follow your active theme’s styles. A developer can restyle them with CSS. See Style the card fields with CSS.
Testing advanced credit and debit card features with PayPal Sandbox
↑ Back to topThe Advanced Card Processing implements on-site hosted fields to deliver SCA and PCI-compliant payment experiences and supports advanced features like 3D Secure 2 or Vaulting. The Vaulting feature requires special cards for testing: PayPal documentation: Vault-ready test cards
Note: Credit cards can only be saved in the Vault with the Advanced Card Processing and not the standard credit card Smart Button.
3D Secure 2 requires dedicated test cards which can be found in the official PayPal documentation. Regular non-3D Secure and non-Vaulting payments can be tested with cards from the Card Generator in the PayPal developer dashboard.
Questions and support
↑ Back to topDo you still have questions and need assistance?
- Get in touch with a Happiness Engineer via our Help Desk. We provide support for extensions developed by and/or sold on WooCommerce.com, and Jetpack/WordPress.com customers.
- If you are not a customer, we recommend finding help in the WooCommerce support forum or hiring a Woo Agency Partner. These are trusted agencies with a proven track record of building highly customized, scalable online stores. Learn more about Woo Agency Partners.