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PayPal is a payment option on your checkout, shown as a tab next to the card form. The buyer picks PayPal, approves the payment on PayPal’s own pages, and comes back to your funnel. Your card merchant (Stripe, NMI or Authorize.Net) still runs the card form on the same page.
PayPal is never the main merchant of a domain or funnel. A domain needs a card merchant, because the checkout’s card form is built from it, and PayPal has no card form. The app does not let you pick PayPal (or Klarna) as a domain’s merchant, a funnel’s merchant, or the merchant a Set Merchant node switches to. You add PayPal to a checkout page instead, as shown below.

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Before you start

You need:
  1. A PayPal Business account.
  2. An app in the PayPal Developer Dashboard, with its Client ID and Secret. Use a Sandbox app to test and a Live app to take real payments.
  3. A card merchant on the domain the checkout runs on. See How to set up a new merchant.
If PayPal shows a “No-Code Checkout” page when you open your Live account, click Manage API credentials (or Invite your developer) to reach the Developer Dashboard.

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Step 1 - add the PayPal merchant

  1. Go to Merchants → Add Merchant and choose PayPal.
  2. Paste the Client ID and Secret. Sandbox and Live credentials have their own fields, and the Mode toggle decides which pair is used.
  3. Save.
When you save, ElasticFunnels:
  • Creates the webhook on your PayPal app for captures, refunds, voids and disputes, so refunds and chargebacks reach your reports without any setup on your side.
  • Checks whether your PayPal app can vault buyer wallets. Vaulting is what makes one-click upsells and subscriptions possible (see below). The check places a $1.00 test order that the buyer never approves, so nothing is charged.

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Step 2 - add the PayPal tab to your checkout page

Add data-paypal to the card panel, with your PayPal merchant’s ID (shown on the Merchants list):
The panel now renders as two tabs: Credit Card (from the domain’s merchant) and PayPal. The same Complete my order button submits either one. Nothing else on the page changes: the order summary, bumps, totals and the customer fields all work the same way. See How to design a checkout page for the full page. In the page builder, select the Credit Card Form block and pick the merchant under PayPal Options → PayPal Merchant.
data-paypal is set per page on purpose. A checkout only offers PayPal where you add it, so you can keep PayPal off a page (for example a subscription offer you only want on cards) without touching the merchant.
data-paypal only counts when the ID belongs to a PayPal merchant in the same brand. A deleted merchant or a typo in the ID hides the PayPal tab, and the card form keeps working.

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What the buyer sees

  1. The buyer fills in their email and name, picks the PayPal tab and clicks the button.
  2. They are sent to PayPal, log in and approve the payment. The amount PayPal shows includes bumps, tax and shipping.
  3. PayPal sends them back to your funnel, the payment is captured, and they continue to the next step (an upsell or the thank-you page), exactly as after a card payment.
If the buyer cancels on PayPal, they return to the checkout and can pay with a card instead. If PayPal cannot start the payment, the buyer stays on the checkout with a message to pay by card or try again; the cause is recorded for your support team.

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One-click upsells and subscriptions (vaulting)

When your PayPal app can vault buyer wallets, the first PayPal payment also saves the buyer’s PayPal wallet for later charges that the buyer agreed to: If a one-click upsell charge fails, the buyer is sent to PayPal to approve it instead of seeing a decline.

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Turning vaulting on

Vaulting is a feature PayPal enables on your app. ElasticFunnels checks it every time you save the merchant. If it is off:
  • Checkout still works. Payments complete normally without vaulting.
  • One-click upsells fall back to the PayPal approval page, and subscription renewals cannot be charged until vaulting is on.
To enable it, open your app in the PayPal Developer Dashboard and turn on Save payment methods (PayPal’s vault feature) under the app’s features. On Live accounts PayPal may need to approve it. Then save the PayPal merchant again so the check runs again.

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Testing with the PayPal sandbox

  1. Create a Sandbox app in the Developer Dashboard and copy its Client ID and Secret into the sandbox fields of the PayPal merchant.
  2. Set Mode to Sandbox, or keep Live and use the merchant’s test key: see Test mode.
  3. Open your checkout, choose PayPal, and log in with a sandbox personal account from Testing Tools → Sandbox Accounts in the Developer Dashboard.
Sandbox payments are recorded as test orders.

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Klarna

Klarna works the same way: add data-klarna="<merchant id>" to the card panel to show a Klarna tab, and like PayPal it cannot be a domain’s or funnel’s main merchant.