AI Summary
The other evening, I found a gorgeous hand-poured candle on a maker’s website I’d never heard of. Small shop, nice branding, exactly the kind of business I like to support.
Then I got to the checkout. Card only. I use PayPal for almost everything online. It’s quick, I don’t have to dig out my card, and I don’t have to think about it. But it wasn’t an option, so I just shrugged and closed the tab.
That maker lost a sale. Not because of her product, not because of her price, but because my preferred way to pay wasn’t there.
This happens more than most people realize. A customer is ready to buy, they get to checkout, and the payment method they want isn’t available. Some of them will enter their card details anyway. But a lot of them won’t. The more ways you let people pay, the more of them follow through.
Most WPForms users are exactly that kind of business. You’re the small shop, the independent maker, the local service provider. Your site might be beautiful, your product might be perfect, but some of your visitors might hesitate at checkout.
That’s why we’ve made PayPal available to every WPForms user.
What’s new
If you’ve been using our PayPal integration on a Pro or Elite plan, you already know how well it works. But this release is a big step forward, for everyone.
PayPal is now available to all WPForms users. Connect your account, drag the PayPal field into your form, and you’re live.
And it’s not just PayPal anymore. We’ve expanded the payment methods available through the PayPal integration to include:
- Pay Later: Let customers buy now and pay over time, which can increase conversions for higher-priced items.
- Google Pay and Apple Pay: One-tap checkout for mobile visitors. No typing, no friction.
- Venmo: Hugely popular in the US, especially with younger buyers.
- Fastlane: PayPal’s accelerated checkout that auto-fills payment details for returning customers.
- Regional payment methods: So your international visitors can pay the way they’re used to.
This means a single PayPal field on your form now gives your customers a whole range of ways to pay. You set it up once, and they choose what works for them.
A few things worth knowing about how it works:
- PayPal and credit cards on the same form. Your visitors can pay with their PayPal balance or enter a card, all through the same field. You don’t need to choose one or the other, and neither do they. PayPal supports Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Maestro, and Discover.
- Customers never leave your site. PayPal checkout opens right on your page instead of redirecting somewhere else. That matters more than you’d think, because every redirect is a chance for someone to drop off.
- One-time payments and recurring subscriptions. Whether you’re selling a product, taking donations, or running a membership with monthly billing, it works.
- It looks like your site, not like PayPal’s. You can customize the button shape, color, and size so it actually matches your branding instead of looking like a generic checkout widget.
- Real-time payment tracking. Your dashboard updates automatically when a payment completes, a subscription renews, or a refund is processed so there’s no more guessing whether a payment actually went through.
No plugin costs, no monthly fees
You don’t need to upgrade or buy anything to start accepting PayPal. The integration is built into WPForms Lite, and you can connect your PayPal account and go live today.
PayPal charges their standard processing fees (they always do, regardless of what plugin you use), and WPForms adds a small 3% transaction fee on the Lite plan.
If you’re processing higher volumes and want to remove that 3%, WPForms Pro and Elite include the PayPal Pro addon at no extra cost. That also unlocks conditional logic for your payment forms, so you can do things like show different payment options based on what someone selects, or adjust pricing dynamically.
Who this is really for
Think about the yoga instructor who teaches community classes and collects payment through a simple form on her site. Her students are dropping in and out week to week, and a lot of them would rather pay through PayPal than enter their card details on a new site every time.
The person running a small nonprofit who set up a donation form last year. They’ve been leaving money on the table because some donors prefer PayPal, and until now, adding it meant upgrading.
The freelancer who sends invoices through a WordPress form and just lost a client in another country where PayPal is the default way to pay online.
None of these people need a full ecommerce setup. They need a form that takes money, and now that form can take money however their customers want to send it.
Give your visitors a choice
If you’re on WPForms Lite, head to your form builder and you’ll see the PayPal field ready to go. Connect your account and you’re live.
If you’re already on Pro or Elite, you get all the same PayPal features with no additional fees.
Get Started With PayPal in WPForms
This is one of those updates where I wish I could see every form it ends up on. The nonprofit donation pages, the freelancer invoices, the first sale for someone who just launched their shop last week.
We could have kept PayPal as a Pro-only feature. But if you’re running a small business or a nonprofit on a tight budget, you shouldn’t have to choose between keeping costs down and giving your customers a proper checkout experience. The big stores offer PayPal, Stripe, and everything in between. Now you can too, even on a free plan. That’s how it should work.
If you set it up and get your first PayPal payment, I’d love to hear about it. Share it in our VIP Circle and give your business some extra visibility while you’re at it.
Till next time,
Lauren
P.S. Our mission has always been to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys. PayPal for everyone is a big step in that direction, but we’re not done. There’s more coming that I think you’re going to like a lot.
