Support

May 17, 2022 at 1:31 pm

Hi there!

Thanks for contacting our support today.
Assuming you are trying to use the Direct PayPal Payment, you must have a PayPal Business Account with the PayPal Payment Pro enabled. If you already have a business account, check if you added a home/service home to your profile.

Check our documentation to double-check if everything is set up correctly:
https://eventespresso.com/wiki/paypal-pro-payment-gateway/

Let us know if you have any further questions!

May 19, 2022 at 5:57 am

Hi there,

The above error means you are using the PayPal Pro payment method within Event Espresso but your PayPal account doesn’t allow for it.

Normally that means you either don’t have WebSite Payment Pro enabled on your PayPal account, or (as the above mentions) your account doesn’t allow for the integration method we use within our integration.

Did you intentionally select PayPal Pro as a payment method within Event Espresso?

I’d recommend using an offsite payment method such as PayPal Express over Pro and this is due to the fact that PayPal Pro is a onsite payment method where your server handles all of the customers card data and then passes it over to PayPal. That means it requires the highest level of PCI Compliance on your part over an offsite payment method like PayPal Express

(Note many users are unaware of this so I’m just checking that you are)

May 19, 2022 at 10:59 am

Im pretty sure i am using paypal pro with eventespresso on another client/project without all the pci configuration.

Nothing actually stops you from processing payments and not being PCI compliant, but if there is a breach on your site/server and fraudulent card transactions are processed or card data is captured then any investigation will check your compliance and apparently hold you liable for those transactions if your not.

My intention is not to scaremonger but rather inform as a lot of people are simply unaware.

can i not process payments while the customer is on my site anymore?

If you are using a different PayPal account than the ‘working’ one above for this site then it likely does not have access to Website Payments Pro and/or the DoDirectPayment method.

So in short, no, at least based on PayPal’s response above.

May 19, 2022 at 12:25 pm

so they used to allow this and my previous project is at risk?

It’s not really about them ‘allowing’ it previously, in short PCI compliance makes sure you are handling card data in a secure and protected way. Everyone who handles any form of card data needs some form of compliance but it depends on how much data you have access to and ‘where’/’what’ has access to it which determines the level of compliance you need.

PayPal will have their own compliance levels they maintain and your PCI compliance isn’t their responsibility, it’s yours. So theres nothing really changed from PayPals perspective here in terms of PCI, the difference now is they dont allow new signups to Website Payments Pro so can’t use our Paypal Pro payment method.

i wonder why they are not requiring me to change it?

The short answer, as harsh as it may sound, is they dont care. Its not on them for you to comply, it is on you.

If something happened which caused an investigation then Paypal’s reply would be along the lines of “it wasn’t our servers that have been compromised, it was yours which we have no control over”.

I’m guessing here as I’ve never had it happen to me but if you Google around you’ll find similar stories. PCI compliance is on you and in my opinion your better using a payment method which requires the lowest level of responsibility to avoid the above as much as possible.

May 19, 2022 at 8:48 pm

You’re most welcome 🙂

Event Espresso has the PayPal Express payment method build into it which is available for all PayPal accounts:

https://eventespresso.com/wiki/paypal-express-payment-gateway/#locate