Articles on: Checkout Help

Help with PayPal "In-Line" Card Payments

Help with PayPal In-Line Guest Card Payments


When a seller / administrator connects a PayPal Standard account as their payment processor, you will a see a checkout option labeled "Debit or Credit Card" listed as an option in the smart payment buttons.

In-Line Guest Card Checkout powered by PayPal

This card checkout, the inputs, and validations and error messages are entirely controlled by PayPal. Payable Apps, as the platform developer, sadly has very limited ability to debug this particular card checkout experience.

This card checkout is designed for casual sellers in order to offer a PayPal "guest" checkout experience, but it has some limitations. This version of card checkout can cause issues/confusion when a buyer does not remember/realize the email address or credit card they are trying to use is already associated with a PayPal Account, but just wants to use their card directly. With the in-line guest checkout, PayPal will want this user login instead of using a known card as a guest.

Trying to "test" your own checkout with real payments? PayPal does a good job of blocking known devices, IP Addresses, and cards that are associated with the receiving PayPal Account so people do not pay themselves. When testing your first live order, it's best to send it to a friend or family member to use their own unrelated device and card.

For sellers / administrators in US, CA, AU, UK we recommend upgrading your PayPal card checkout to PayPal "Advanced Cards" by using the "PayPal Commerce Platform" option in the Connect a Payment provider section. PayPal "Advanced Card" checkout will allow cards to be used directly regardless of if they are linked to a PayPal account, unlike the PayPal In-Line Card checkout.


Are you a customer having trouble making a payment through PayPal's "in-line" card button?



Payable Apps do our very best to ensure the guest checkout works as intended. However, we do receive reports from time to time of users having trouble successfully using the in-line card checkout. Below are some tips we have collected to help your customers submit a card payment.

95% of the time the issue is that, you once had a PayPal Account associated with the provided email address or the card you are trying to use in what is intended to be the PayPal "guest only" checkout.

If the above is true, you will need to pay / login with that PayPal account instead of using the guest card checkout. Don't remember your PayPal Password? Click here to go to the PayPal password reset flow

"The card you entered cannot be used for this payment. Please enter a different credit or debit card number." This can mean:

Your card is associated with a specific PayPal account, and you're not logging in with that particular account.
Your card was associated with a PayPal account that has since been closed.
You've linked the card to a PayPal account, but have not yet confirmed it.
You've exceeded your card limit with the PayPal system.
Your email address is raising a red flag in PayPal's system.
Your browser is not accepting cookies. You should clear any existing cookies and try again.
In some rare cases, the country your seller is from does not allow them to accept international card payments.

"Something went wrong. We'll take you back to checkout so you can try again."

Sometimes this happens intermittently and for specific countries.
Click the "Try Again" button and a new dialog window will open. Retry submitting your information in the dialog window for a second time. Usually this does the trick.

Blue "Pay Now" Button is not working or Form does nothing and will not submit.

Refresh the Page
Click the Gold "Pay with PayPal" Button instead, then scroll down and select "Pay with Debit or Credit Card"

Getting to the Full PayPal Guest Checkout

PayPal has Maintenance and Outages

Take a look at this page to see if there is an active outage or production issue.

None of this help?

Use the chat link at the bottom of this page, and send us your Order ID and we will see what we can do.

Updated on: 10/12/2021

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