PayPal errors

Hi there!

Thanks for sharing the details we understand how concerning this is, especially since customers are unable to complete their orders.

To investigate this further, we’ll need to check the PayPal logs. Please enable PayPal debug logging:

1. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Payments.
2. Open PayPal Standard settings.
3. Enable the Debug Log option and save changes.

After that:

1. Go to WooCommerce → Status → Logs.
2. Select the PayPal log from the dropdown (look for logs starting with paypal- and matching the date of the failed orders).
3. Please share the log entries related to these failed or cancelled orders.

This will help us identify why customers are seeing shipping/address errors and why the shipping address is not being saved on cancelled orders.

Also, could you please confirm why you are still using PayPal Standard? This integration is legacy and no longer actively developed, and newer PayPal integrations provide better compatibility with recent WooCommerce versions.

While PayPal Standard will remain available for existing stores, it does have some limitations, and support for it is increasingly limited. Because of this, we strongly encourage store owners to consider switching to the PayPal Payments extension.

PayPal Payments offers several advantages, including:

• A wider range of payment methods (PayPal, credit/debit cards, and many local payment options).
• Most payment options don’t require customers to have a PayPal account.
• Full support for automatic recurring payments—great if you’re using WooCommerce Subscriptions or similar plugins.
• Enhanced security features such as PCI compliance and two-factor authentication via 3DS.

While you can continue using PayPal Standard, moving to PayPal Payments ensures better compatibility, more features, and stronger future support.

If you want to switch from PayPal Standard to PayPal Payments, here’s a helpful guide on how to do that:
PayPal Payments Upgrade Guide

Thank you

Hi @tonyzyc,

Thank you for sharing this update, I can see how concerning it is to have multiple cancelled orders without logs or shipping details being saved, and I’m here to help you get to the bottom of this.

To better understand what might have triggered this, could you please confirm the exact version of WooCommerce you were using before the issue started, and the version you updated to when the errors began?

Since you’ve reverted to a previous version for now, a good next step would be to set up a staging site and safely update it to the latest version of WooCommerce. This will allow us to investigate without affecting your live store.

On that staging site, please:

• Update WooCommerce to the latest version
• Try to reproduce the issue with a test order using PayPal
• Then share the following with us:
  • Your System Status Report
  • Any available WooCommerce logs related to the order attempts (even if PayPal logs are still missing)

You can upload these using: https://pastebin.com or https://gist.github.com. This will help us take a closer look at what’s happening behind the scenes and guide you toward a proper fix.

Looking forward to your update so we can continue troubleshooting together.

Hi @tonyzyc,

Thank you for sharing that update, I understand the situation better now, especially with the limitation of having only one PayPal account, and I appreciate you confirming that reverting to version 9.6.4 resolved the issue for your customers.

I completely get how setting up a staging site for PayPal testing can feel tricky in this case. One option that could help is to set up the staging site and enable PayPal’s sandbox or test mode there. This allows you to simulate transactions without needing a second live PayPal account. You can learn more about PayPal Payments testing here: https://woocommerce.com/document/woocommerce-paypal-payments/troubleshooting/

Alternatively, if setting up sandbox testing is not ideal right now, you could try the earlier troubleshooting steps directly on your production site during a low-traffic period, such as late at night. This would allow you to safely test without impacting many customers.

Since the issue appears tied specifically to the newer WooCommerce version, testing in either of these ways will help confirm whether this is a compatibility issue with PayPal Standard or something environment-specific on your site.

Please let us know how it goes, we’ll be here to continue working through this with you.