Error: PayPal order id is missing

Resolved

(@aj127)

(I posted this on your primary website's support forum a week ago but have gotten no reply)

We’re running Version 4.16.4 of the plugin and have been getting an error of “Error: An unexpected error occurred while processing the donation. Please try again or contact the site administrator.” when trying to donate. The logs show the reason being “PayPal order id is missing.” along with the following… how do we fix this, please?

{

"Payment Gateway": "paypal-commerce",

"Donation": {

"id": 24931,

"campaignId": 1,

"formId": 98,

"formTitle": "Donate to REDACTED",

"purchaseKey": "52413977bbdacab6f0d508ff4da57f8d",

"donorIp": "172.56.64.62",

"createdAt": {

"Object Class": "DateTime",

"date": "2026-07-22 17:04:08.000000",

"timezone_type": 3,

"timezone": "America/New_York"

},

"updatedAt": {

"Object Class": "DateTime",

"date": "2026-07-22 17:04:08.000000",

"timezone_type": 3,

"timezone": "America/New_York"

},

"status": {

"Object Class": "Give\\Donations\\ValueObjects\\DonationStatus",

"\u0000*\u0000value": "pending",

"\u0000Give\\Framework\\Support\\ValueObjects\\BaseEnum\u0000key": "PENDING"

},

"type": {

"Object Class": "Give\\Donations\\ValueObjects\\DonationType",

"\u0000*\u0000value": "single",

"\u0000Give\\Framework\\Support\\ValueObjects\\BaseEnum\u0000key": "SINGLE"

},

"mode": {

"Object Class": "Give\\Donations\\ValueObjects\\DonationMode",

"\u0000*\u0000value": "live",

"\u0000Give\\Framework\\Support\\ValueObjects\\BaseEnum\u0000key": "LIVE"

},

"amount": {

"Object Class": "Give\\Framework\\Support\\ValueObjects\\Money",

"\u0000Give\\Framework\\Support\\ValueObjects\\Money\u0000amount": {

"Object Class": "Money\\Money",

"\u0000Money\\Money\u0000amount": "500",

"\u0000Money\\Money\u0000currency": {

"Object Class": "Money\\Currency",

"\u0000Money\\Currency\u0000code": "USD"

}

}

},

"feeAmountRecovered": null,

"exchangeRate": "1",

"gatewayId": "paypal-commerce",

"donorId": 835,

"honorific": "",

"firstName": "REDACTED",

"lastName": "REDACTED",

"email": "REDACTED@DOMAIN.COM",

"phone": null,

"subscriptionId": 0,

"billingAddress": {

"Object Class": "Give\\Donations\\Properties\\BillingAddress",

"country": "",

"address1": "",

"address2": "",

"city": "",

"state": "",

"zip": ""

},

"anonymous": false,

"levelId": "custom",

"gatewayTransactionId": null,

"company": null,

"comment": null

}

}

The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

Plugin Support Ginger Coolidge
(@gscoolidge)

2 weeks, 3 days ago

Hello @aj127 ,

Glad you reached out, happy to help.

I checked our technical support system and did not find any entries referencing your site url. If you received a return email from your support post, please share a screenshot if you can…..I want to make sure the main technical support form is working as expected. For reference, the main technical support form is here https://software.liquidweb.com/support/.

Regarding that error, the payPalOrderId is provided by the PayPal paypal-commerce script. On your donation page, I see you’re using an older, legacy donation form where the PayPal fields are not displaying when you click the Donate Now button to show the rest of the donation form.

This is a known issue with the older forms when the Floating Labels setting is enabled with PayPal. The workaround for this is => go into your form settings for that specific form, in the top entry Form Template , and click the Disabled option for the Floating Labels section, save the changes, and see if that solves the issue.

If that does not solve the issue, the next options would be to display the donation form in full on the page instead of in a modal/pop-up.

Let us know how it goes ! Have a great day 🙂

Thread Starter aj127
(@aj127)

2 weeks, 3 days ago

Thank you! Somehow I wound up on https://givewp.featureos.app for support, which is where I posted the other ticket?

Changing that setting fixed it so that donations now go through, however, it’s now requiring a complete billing/shipping address (it did not previously, just the credit card/exp/cvv) AND there’s now a checkbox for “Ship to billing address” which is weird, as this is a donation and not a purchase of anything requiring shipping — how do we turn that off?

Plugin Support Ginger Coolidge
(@gscoolidge)

2 weeks, 3 days ago

Hello @aj127,

Thank you for that information, that is super helpful! That location is an older system where we used to track feature requests and bug reports, it was not a support ticket resource. I’ve mentioned this management so they can decide how to prevent those entries so you don’t feel “ghosted” 🙂

Regarding your donation form, I’m glad we’re making progress that now the PayPal buttons are displaying. Regarding the shipping fields, those are also from the PayPal Commerce API and GiveWP does not have settings available to turn those fields off. These appear when the Smart Buttons option is enabled in the GiveWP > Settings > Payment Gateways > PayPal settings page where the black Debit or Card button is used. If you connected to PayPal Donations originally with the Advanced Payments option, you can turn off the Smart buttons (Select Auto in that section) and then it will show the card fields without the button, an no shipping fields.

I hope this helps to clarify! Please let us know if you have further questions 🙂

Thread Starter aj127
(@aj127)

2 weeks, 3 days ago

Thank you so much, Ginger! I really appreciate the help. 🙂

I just checked our PayPal settings in that area and it looks like Payment Field Type was already set to “auto” (not Smart Buttons Only) and Collect Billing Details was set to “Disabled” so I’m confused why we’re still seeing all of that?
Plugin Support Ginger Coolidge
(@gscoolidge)

2 weeks, 2 days ago
Hello,

Regarding the Smart Buttons / Auto setting, this also depends on how you are connected to PayPal. Up towards the top of the screen where you connected to the Live PayPal connection, you’ll see either the Advanced or Standard Payments as the type of connection. If it’s Standard, then it won’t show the hosted fields for the debit/credit card payments, only the black button.

The bottom line is the form is not displaying the payment fields correctly on the homepage. You can compare how they look to your standalone donation page here: https://blindfaith.org/donations/donate-to-blind-faith/ — that’s the same form, and it displays PayPal’s fields correctly.

The homepage is different because of how the form is embedded there. It’s set to GiveWP’s “Modal/Reveal” display mode (the popup), which loads only a button up front and defers the rest of the form. In that mode, GiveWP doesn’t load PayPal’s payment script, so instead of PayPal’s real fields you see some generic placeholder card fields — which aren’t connected to the gateway. This is a known limitation of the older legacy form format when used in popup/modal mode that your Alone theme was built with, adding it’s own custom styling.

Two suggestions here:
1. The simplest fix is to switch the homepage form to “Full Form” display instead of the popup. That loads the form through GiveWP’s normal path, and PayPal’s real fields appear correctly. The tradeoff is you’d lose the popup, and I know that popup makes sense for a homepage.
2. The better long-term option, if you want to keep a popup-style experience, is to upgrade the donation form the newer, visual builder format using the Multi-Step template option rather than the Legacy format. The new forms are more modern, mobile-friendly, and don’t suffer from this deferred-loading issue.
One heads-up on the new forms: they render inside a secure iframe, which means the Alone theme’s custom styling won’t reach inside them. In practice that’s usually a benefit — the form stays consistent and isn’t affected by the theme’s customizations.

Let us know if you have an follow-up questions we can assist with! Have a good day 🙂
Thread Starter aj127
(@aj127)

2 weeks, 2 days ago

Thank you. I created a new form using the Multi-Step template and implemented it via the pop-up as you said this should still work, but the pop-up fails to render and shows no content whatsoever. 🙁

Plugin Support Ginger Coolidge
(@gscoolidge)

2 weeks, 2 days ago

Hello @aj127 ,

Thanks for the update! My apologies, I wasn’t clear on the use of the Multi-Step form. I was suggesting to use that in lieu of the modal/pop-up, so you’d just add the shortcode with the donation form id which I believe is 98. I’ve recorded a quick screen video to provide more details.

Also, if you do implement the new visual form builder, make sure you have your payment gateways enabled in GiveWP > Settings > Payment Gateways by clicking on the Visual Form Builder tab that I’ve noted in this screenshot.

https://www.loom.com/i/79229cb1cb2a4edab22617629173a128

I hope this helps to point you in the right direction! Please let us know if you have further questions 🙂

Thread Starter aj127
(@aj127)

2 weeks ago

Thank you so much for taking so much time to go through that for me; building the format itself was really easy, that wasn’t the challenge. I like the pop-up but i guess if it’s not the best implementation then we’ll just have to stick to using a standard page integration for the form.

I created a new page (https://blindfaith.org/donate/) for the multi-step form and added the shortcode but it’s still not working correctly. The formatting is extremely weird and I’m getting a “JSON.parse: unexpected character at line 1 column 1 of the JSON data” error as I try to click through.

I appreciate the help a ton but I’m wondering if maybe this plugin just won’t work for us. 🙁

Plugin Support Ginger Coolidge
(@gscoolidge)

2 weeks ago

Hello @aj127 ,

Thank you for following up! We’d like to take a closer look at what is happening, but we cannot ask for site credentials here on a public topic.

Please reach out to priority Technical Support via our main support form here https://software.liquidweb.com/support/. Make sure to include a link to this topic, and select GiveWP in the product list, and we’ll be happy to assist you further.

I’m going to close this topic now as we’ll be assisting you further in tech support.

Thank you 🙂
Thread Starter aj127
(@aj127)

1 week, 3 days ago
Thank you! I just submitted ticket #52827898 🙂
- This reply was modified 1 week, 3 days ago by aj127.

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

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