In the first part of this series I am going to show you how you can generate buttons to collect payments through PayPal using their Button Creation Tool. You won't have to write a single line of code—just copy and paste an HTML snippet.
This is the easiest integration to take payments from PayPal. It works on mobile devices, tablets and PC. To create a payment button, you have to log in on the PayPal website, and then copy and paste a short HTML snippet on your website to add a payment button for a single item or for a shopping cart. You can securely accept credit card, debit card, or PayPal payments.
There are seven types of payment buttons that you can generate from your PayPal Business account after you log in and navigate to the PayPal Button Creation Tool.
This type of button is widely used and very simple to set up. Start by logging in to your PayPal Account and navigating to PayPal Buttons. In this section you can see all your saved buttons. Bear in mind that you can customise the text on every button, and you can even use your custom images if you like. You can also assign an optional item id to each button to link to each product id that you have. So you could have multiple "Buy Now" buttons on your website if you have multiple products.
To create a new button, in the Related Items box on the right, click the Create new button link, and the following form will open:
Enter the payment details for your item here, as well as the item name and price. In this example the item name is "Sample PayPal Course". This button comes with a dropdown and two different prices. If you only have one price, the dropdown will not be shown. Now click on Create Button, and Add your button code to your webpage opens:
Copy the generated HTML code and paste it in your web editor where you want the button to appear.
The following diagram shows what the navigation journey is for the user after clicking on your Buy Now PayPal Button.
As you can see in the diagram, after clicking on Buy Now, your customer is redirected to PayPal. Your customer can log in to his or her PayPal account and pay with the PayPal balance (1a) or securely enter credit card details (1b). After this step, an order summary is displayed (2), and clicking on Pay Now will capture the payment, display the Thank You page (3), and notify your customer by email.
If you are selling digital products, possibly you will not be interested in this feature, but this is an interesting feature when you are selling physical products. PayPal lets you manage your stock quantities so you don't oversell, as well as letting you introduce your cost per product, so you can have a quick overview of revenue and profit. This can be enabled from the Create Button form, step 2.
The basic checkout experience leaves buyers on the PayPal website after they make the payment. You can modify that behavior so your customers return to your website after checkout. This can be set up from the Create Button form, step 3.
If your needs for taking PayPal payments are not very complex, possibly this is the only integration that you might need, and you can see that you don't need to do any actual coding.
Donate buttons are very similar to Buy Now buttons, and they're commonly used on websites to collect contribution payments from donors. They can be configured to collect either pre-determined contribution amounts or amounts selected by donors.
To create a Donate button, you have to open the Create new button form again:
Select Donations on the Choose a button type drop-down. All the other options are the same as for the Buy Now button, except that in this case there's no inventory tracking or profit and loss tracking.
If you want to obtain subscription payments automatically from buyers for access to online content and services, this is the type of button that you should use. To create it, you have to open again the Create New Button form:
After you select Subscriptions from the Choose a button type drop-down, the form is pretty similar to the previous button types, but there are some small differences:
PayPal attempts to collect recurring payments from subscribers on the day after the previous billing cycle or trial period ends. Billing cycles can be daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, depending on the terms of the original subscription. If the payment is weekly, the charge will be made each week on the same day. If the payment is monthly, the charge will be on the same day of the month, each month. For yearly payments, the payment is collected on the same day of the month, each year.
As a subscription service provider, you can cancel the subscriptions of individual subscribers from the Subscription Details pages of your PayPal account. In addition, your subscribers can cancel their subscriptions from their PayPal account.
You have the option to add this button in your private area, so each customer can cancel their subscription whenever they want. Considering that after a subscription has been canceled, you can not reactivate it again, I probably would not add this button; instead, I would add a form to contact the website manager to request a cancelation of the service. At least there would be a last chance to keep the customer happy. If you still want to add this button, after you create the Subscription button, on the confirmation page, you can see this:
Click on Create an Unsubscribe button, and this page will open:
After you click on Create Button, you get the HTML code to copy and paste in your customer private area:
As you can see, if you want to sell a subscription to your customers, it can be easily achieved by generating buttons from your PayPal business account.
Automatic Billing is similar to a Subscription, but the charge for each billing cycle is not fixed. Your customer will authorise a payment up to a limit amount. Then you need to go every billing cycle, monthly for example, and set the amount that your customer has consumed.
For instance, let's say that you are selling a cleaning service subscription. Your customers could authorise you to charge up to $200 per month, and some months they may use fewer hours, and the charge might be less than $200.
To create an Automatic Billing button, you have to navigate to the PayPal Button Creation Tool, and select Automatic Billing from the Choose a button type dropdown.
To view the Automatic Billing agreements, you have to navigate to the recurring payments dashboard. In this dashboard you can see the subscription payments, automatically billed payments, and installment payments. After you log in to your PayPal business account, click on Tools > All Tools at the top of the page, and select Recurring Payments from the Tools page.
From this page you can cancel any automatic billing plan, or select Bill Now to collect a payment from the customer for the current month. The Bill Now link is only available when the status for the plan is To be billed. After a payment has been collected for the current month, the status changes to Billed.
If you want to offer interest-free installment payments to your customers, you can use this type of button. You can collect the first installment on checkout, with up to three additional installments. Or you can set up installment payments that defer the first installment, with up to four future payments. All payments must be collected within one year of checkout.
This payment type also allows the customer to make the full payment, so you don't need a Buy button next to this one. A good idea would be to create a custom image button, where you say "Buy Now (pay up to 4 installments interest-free if you like)". Or use some other text that makes this clear.
To create an Installment Payment button, you have to navigate to the PayPal Button Creation Tool and select Installment Plan from the Choose a button type dropdown. In this form you can set up the installments and advanced features as in the previous buttons.
To manage installment plans, you have to navigate to the recurring payments dashboard. In this list you can cancel, initiate installment plans, view plan details, and modify basic installment plan information.
This functionality allows you to use a Shopping Cart hosted by PayPal. You have to generate two types of button: an Add to Cart button for each type of product that you want to sell, and a View Cart button that displays a list of items in your customer's cart.
To create an Add to Cart button, you have to navigate to the PayPal Button Creation Tool, and select Shopping Cart from the Choose a button type dropdown.
After you create this button, you need to create only one View Cart button, regardless of the number of Add to Cart buttons that you create and add to your website. View Cart buttons on your website allow buyers to view their shopping carts and the items in them. From there they can proceed to checkout. To create the button, click on the Create a View Cart button.
The form is pretty simple, and you can customise the look and feel. When you're ready, click on Create Button to get the HTML snippet.
This is a very useful feature if you have several products for sale on your website. If you have a CMS or many products, this approach would become very difficult to maintain, and it would be better to integrate with PayPal using their API, as we will explore in the next tutorial of this series.
This type of button allows you to sell Gift Certificates that your customers can use to pay on your website. This type of button seem not to be getting much attention these days, and only the old documentation in PDF is available. I would recommend that you don't use it, and I would not be surprised to see this button being removed in the near future.
As we have seen in this tutorial, you can take different types of payment using PayPal buttons simply by copying and pasting HTML code snippets on your websites, simplifying the process of taking online payments. In the next part of this series, I am going to show you how to take payments using the PayPal REST API.
The Best Small Business Web Designs by DesignRush
/Create Modern Vue Apps Using Create-Vue and Vite
/Pros and Cons of Using WordPress
/How to Fix the “There Has Been a Critical Error in Your Website” Error in WordPress
/How To Fix The “There Has Been A Critical Error in Your Website” Error in WordPress
/How to Create a Privacy Policy Page in WordPress
/How Long Does It Take to Learn JavaScript?
/The Best Way to Deep Copy an Object in JavaScript
/Adding and Removing Elements From Arrays in JavaScript
/Create a JavaScript AJAX Post Request: With and Without jQuery
/5 Real-Life Uses for the JavaScript reduce() Method
/How to Enable or Disable a Button With JavaScript: jQuery vs. Vanilla
/How to Enable or Disable a Button With JavaScript: jQuery vs Vanilla
/Confirm Yes or No With JavaScript
/How to Change the URL in JavaScript: Redirecting
/15+ Best WordPress Twitter Widgets
/27 Best Tab and Accordion Widget Plugins for WordPress (Free & Premium)
/21 Best Tab and Accordion Widget Plugins for WordPress (Free & Premium)
/30 HTML Best Practices for Beginners
/31 Best WordPress Calendar Plugins and Widgets (With 5 Free Plugins)
/25 Ridiculously Impressive HTML5 Canvas Experiments
/How to Implement Email Verification for New Members
/How to Create a Simple Web-Based Chat Application
/30 Popular WordPress User Interface Elements
/Top 18 Best Practices for Writing Super Readable Code
/Best Affiliate WooCommerce Plugins Compared
/18 Best WordPress Star Rating Plugins
/10+ Best WordPress Twitter Widgets
/20+ Best WordPress Booking and Reservation Plugins
/Working With Tables in React: Part Two
/Best CSS Animations and Effects on CodeCanyon
/30 CSS Best Practices for Beginners
/How to Create a Custom WordPress Plugin From Scratch
/10 Best Responsive HTML5 Sliders for Images and Text… and 3 Free Options
/16 Best Tab and Accordion Widget Plugins for WordPress
/18 Best WordPress Membership Plugins and 5 Free Plugins
/25 Best WooCommerce Plugins for Products, Pricing, Payments and More
/10 Best WordPress Twitter Widgets
1 /12 Best Contact Form PHP Scripts for 2020
/20 Popular WordPress User Interface Elements
/10 Best WordPress Star Rating Plugins
/12 Best CSS Animations on CodeCanyon
/12 Best WordPress Booking and Reservation Plugins
/12 Elegant CSS Pricing Tables for Your Latest Web Project
/24 Best WordPress Form Plugins for 2020
/14 Best PHP Event Calendar and Booking Scripts
/Create a Blog for Each Category or Department in Your WooCommerce Store
/8 Best WordPress Booking and Reservation Plugins
/Best Exit Popups for WordPress Compared
/Best Exit Popups for WordPress Compared
/11 Best Tab & Accordion WordPress Widgets & Plugins
/12 Best Tab & Accordion WordPress Widgets & Plugins
1 /New Course: Practical React Fundamentals
/Preview Our New Course on Angular Material
/Build Your Own CAPTCHA and Contact Form in PHP
/Object-Oriented PHP With Classes and Objects
/Best Practices for ARIA Implementation
/Accessible Apps: Barriers to Access and Getting Started With Accessibility
/Dramatically Speed Up Your React Front-End App Using Lazy Loading
/15 Best Modern JavaScript Admin Templates for React, Angular, and Vue.js
/15 Best Modern JavaScript Admin Templates for React, Angular and Vue.js
/19 Best JavaScript Admin Templates for React, Angular, and Vue.js
/New Course: Build an App With JavaScript and the MEAN Stack
/Hands-on With ARIA: Accessibility Recipes for Web Apps
/10 Best WordPress Facebook Widgets
13 /Hands-on With ARIA: Accessibility for eCommerce
/New eBooks Available for Subscribers
/Hands-on With ARIA: Homepage Elements and Standard Navigation
/Site Accessibility: Getting Started With ARIA
/How Secure Are Your JavaScript Open-Source Dependencies?
/New Course: Secure Your WordPress Site With SSL
/Testing Components in React Using Jest and Enzyme
/Testing Components in React Using Jest: The Basics
/15 Best PHP Event Calendar and Booking Scripts
/Create Interactive Gradient Animations Using Granim.js
/How to Build Complex, Large-Scale Vue.js Apps With Vuex
1 /Examples of Dependency Injection in PHP With Symfony Components
/Set Up Routing in PHP Applications Using the Symfony Routing Component
1 /A Beginner’s Guide to Regular Expressions in JavaScript
/Introduction to Popmotion: Custom Animation Scrubber
/Introduction to Popmotion: Pointers and Physics
/New Course: Connect to a Database With Laravel’s Eloquent ORM
/How to Create a Custom Settings Panel in WooCommerce
/Building the DOM faster: speculative parsing, async, defer and preload
1 /20 Useful PHP Scripts Available on CodeCanyon
3 /How to Find and Fix Poor Page Load Times With Raygun
/Introduction to the Stimulus Framework
/Single-Page React Applications With the React-Router and React-Transition-Group Modules
12 Best Contact Form PHP Scripts
1 /Getting Started With the Mojs Animation Library: The ShapeSwirl and Stagger Modules
/Getting Started With the Mojs Animation Library: The Shape Module
/Getting Started With the Mojs Animation Library: The HTML Module
/Project Management Considerations for Your WordPress Project
/8 Things That Make Jest the Best React Testing Framework
/Creating an Image Editor Using CamanJS: Layers, Blend Modes, and Events
/New Short Course: Code a Front-End App With GraphQL and React
/Creating an Image Editor Using CamanJS: Applying Basic Filters
/Creating an Image Editor Using CamanJS: Creating Custom Filters and Blend Modes
/Modern Web Scraping With BeautifulSoup and Selenium
/Challenge: Create a To-Do List in React
1 /Deploy PHP Web Applications Using Laravel Forge
/Getting Started With the Mojs Animation Library: The Burst Module
/10 Things Men Can Do to Support Women in Tech
/A Gentle Introduction to Higher-Order Components in React: Best Practices
/Challenge: Build a React Component
/A Gentle Introduction to HOC in React: Learn by Example
/A Gentle Introduction to Higher-Order Components in React
/Creating Pretty Popup Messages Using SweetAlert2
/Creating Stylish and Responsive Progress Bars Using ProgressBar.js
/18 Best Contact Form PHP Scripts for 2022
/How to Make a Real-Time Sports Application Using Node.js
/Creating a Blogging App Using Angular & MongoDB: Delete Post
/Set Up an OAuth2 Server Using Passport in Laravel
/Creating a Blogging App Using Angular & MongoDB: Edit Post
/Creating a Blogging App Using Angular & MongoDB: Add Post
/Introduction to Mocking in Python
/Creating a Blogging App Using Angular & MongoDB: Show Post
/Creating a Blogging App Using Angular & MongoDB: Home
/Creating a Blogging App Using Angular & MongoDB: Login
/Creating Your First Angular App: Implement Routing
/Persisted WordPress Admin Notices: Part 4
/Creating Your First Angular App: Components, Part 2
/Persisted WordPress Admin Notices: Part 3
/Creating Your First Angular App: Components, Part 1
/How Laravel Broadcasting Works
/Persisted WordPress Admin Notices: Part 2
/Create Your First Angular App: Storing and Accessing Data
/Persisted WordPress Admin Notices: Part 1
/Error and Performance Monitoring for Web & Mobile Apps Using Raygun
/Using Luxon for Date and Time in JavaScript
7 /How to Create an Audio Oscillator With the Web Audio API
/How to Cache Using Redis in Django Applications
/20 Essential WordPress Utilities to Manage Your Site
/Introduction to API Calls With React and Axios
/Beginner’s Guide to Angular 4: HTTP
/Rapid Web Deployment for Laravel With GitHub, Linode, and RunCloud.io
/Beginners Guide to Angular 4: Routing
/Beginner’s Guide to Angular 4: Services
/Beginner’s Guide to Angular 4: Components
/Creating a Drop-Down Menu for Mobile Pages
/Introduction to Forms in Angular 4: Writing Custom Form Validators
/10 Best WordPress Booking & Reservation Plugins
/Getting Started With Redux: Connecting Redux With React
/Getting Started With Redux: Learn by Example
/Getting Started With Redux: Why Redux?
/Understanding Recursion With JavaScript
/How to Auto Update WordPress Salts
/How to Download Files in Python
/Eloquent Mutators and Accessors in Laravel
1 /10 Best HTML5 Sliders for Images and Text
/Site Authentication in Node.js: User Signup
/Creating a Task Manager App Using Ionic: Part 2
/Creating a Task Manager App Using Ionic: Part 1
/Introduction to Forms in Angular 4: Reactive Forms
/Introduction to Forms in Angular 4: Template-Driven Forms
/24 Essential WordPress Utilities to Manage Your Site
/25 Essential WordPress Utilities to Manage Your Site
/Get Rid of Bugs Quickly Using BugReplay
1 /Manipulating HTML5 Canvas Using Konva: Part 1, Getting Started
/10 Must-See Easy Digital Downloads Extensions for Your WordPress Site
/22 Best WordPress Booking and Reservation Plugins
/Understanding ExpressJS Routing
/15 Best WordPress Star Rating Plugins
/Creating Your First Angular App: Basics
/Inheritance and Extending Objects With JavaScript
/Introduction to the CSS Grid Layout With Examples
1Performant Animations Using KUTE.js: Part 5, Easing Functions and Attributes
Performant Animations Using KUTE.js: Part 4, Animating Text
/Performant Animations Using KUTE.js: Part 3, Animating SVG
/New Course: Code a Quiz App With Vue.js
/Performant Animations Using KUTE.js: Part 2, Animating CSS Properties
Performant Animations Using KUTE.js: Part 1, Getting Started
/10 Best Responsive HTML5 Sliders for Images and Text (Plus 3 Free Options)
/Single-Page Applications With ngRoute and ngAnimate in AngularJS
/Deferring Tasks in Laravel Using Queues
/Site Authentication in Node.js: User Signup and Login
/Working With Tables in React, Part Two
/Working With Tables in React, Part One
/How to Set Up a Scalable, E-Commerce-Ready WordPress Site Using ClusterCS
/New Course on WordPress Conditional Tags
/TypeScript for Beginners, Part 5: Generics
/Building With Vue.js 2 and Firebase
6 /Best Unique Bootstrap JavaScript Plugins
/Essential JavaScript Libraries and Frameworks You Should Know About
/Vue.js Crash Course: Create a Simple Blog Using Vue.js
/Build a React App With a Laravel RESTful Back End: Part 1, Laravel 5.5 API
/API Authentication With Node.js
/Beginner’s Guide to Angular: Routing
/Beginners Guide to Angular: Routing
/Beginner’s Guide to Angular: Services
/Beginner’s Guide to Angular: Components
/How to Create a Custom Authentication Guard in Laravel
/Learn Computer Science With JavaScript: Part 3, Loops
/Build Web Applications Using Node.js
/Learn Computer Science With JavaScript: Part 4, Functions
/Learn Computer Science With JavaScript: Part 2, Conditionals
/Create Interactive Charts Using Plotly.js, Part 5: Pie and Gauge Charts
/Create Interactive Charts Using Plotly.js, Part 4: Bubble and Dot Charts
Create Interactive Charts Using Plotly.js, Part 3: Bar Charts
/Awesome JavaScript Libraries and Frameworks You Should Know About
/Create Interactive Charts Using Plotly.js, Part 2: Line Charts
/Bulk Import a CSV File Into MongoDB Using Mongoose With Node.js
/Build a To-Do API With Node, Express, and MongoDB
/Getting Started With End-to-End Testing in Angular Using Protractor
/TypeScript for Beginners, Part 4: Classes
/Object-Oriented Programming With JavaScript
/10 Best Affiliate WooCommerce Plugins Compared
/Stateful vs. Stateless Functional Components in React
/Make Your JavaScript Code Robust With Flow
/Build a To-Do API With Node and Restify
/Testing Components in Angular Using Jasmine: Part 2, Services
/Testing Components in Angular Using Jasmine: Part 1
/Creating a Blogging App Using React, Part 6: Tags
/React Crash Course for Beginners, Part 3
/React Crash Course for Beginners, Part 2
/React Crash Course for Beginners, Part 1
/Set Up a React Environment, Part 4
1 /Set Up a React Environment, Part 3
/New Course: Get Started With Phoenix
/Set Up a React Environment, Part 2
/Set Up a React Environment, Part 1
/Command Line Basics and Useful Tricks With the Terminal
/How to Create a Real-Time Feed Using Phoenix and React
/Build a React App With a Laravel Back End: Part 2, React
/Build a React App With a Laravel RESTful Back End: Part 1, Laravel 9 API
/Creating a Blogging App Using React, Part 5: Profile Page
/Pagination in CodeIgniter: The Complete Guide
/JavaScript-Based Animations Using Anime.js, Part 4: Callbacks, Easings, and SVG
/JavaScript-Based Animations Using Anime.js, Part 3: Values, Timeline, and Playback
/Learn to Code With JavaScript: Part 1, The Basics
/10 Elegant CSS Pricing Tables for Your Latest Web Project
/Getting Started With the Flux Architecture in React
/Getting Started With Matter.js: The Composites and Composite Modules
Getting Started With Matter.js: The Engine and World Modules
/10 More Popular HTML5 Projects for You to Use and Study
/Understand the Basics of Laravel Middleware
/Iterating Fast With Django & Heroku
/Creating a Blogging App Using React, Part 4: Update & Delete Posts
/Creating a jQuery Plugin for Long Shadow Design
/How to Register & Use Laravel Service Providers
2 /Unit Testing in React: Shallow vs. Static Testing
/Creating a Blogging App Using React, Part 3: Add & Display Post
/Creating a Blogging App Using React, Part 2: User Sign-Up
20 /Creating a Blogging App Using React, Part 1: User Sign-In
/Creating a Grocery List Manager Using Angular, Part 2: Managing Items
/9 Elegant CSS Pricing Tables for Your Latest Web Project
/Dynamic Page Templates in WordPress, Part 3
/Angular vs. React: 7 Key Features Compared
/Creating a Grocery List Manager Using Angular, Part 1: Add & Display Items
New eBooks Available for Subscribers in June 2017
/Create Interactive Charts Using Plotly.js, Part 1: Getting Started
/The 5 Best IDEs for WordPress Development (And Why)
/33 Popular WordPress User Interface Elements
/New Course: How to Hack Your Own App
/How to Install Yii on Windows or a Mac
/What Is a JavaScript Operator?
/How to Register and Use Laravel Service Providers
/
waly Good blog post. I absolutely love this…