ChronoForms payment systems support

I need to create a membership form with few membership levels, once filled need to take payment. Can Chronoforms link up with payment gateways such as PayPal or others?

it can, what we had in v7 is Mollie and Stripe

PayPal has not been integrated for a while, do you want to use PayPal paynow buttons ?

The problem is about receiving the payment update from PayPal, in order to save the order as "complete", this is complex and you better use an ecommerce solution for it

I would really like to see an option in Chronoforms 7 and 8 to use Paypal.  I am converting all my CF5 forms on my Joomla 3 site to CF7, in preparation for an upgrade of the site to Joomla 5.  My site is for a small membership organization, and our CF5 membership and meeting registration forms all accept payments only using Paypal.  To have to convert not only the forms but our treasurer and our membership to a new payment processor would make our transition to Joomla 5 even more complicated.  If there's any way that the integration options for Paypal in CF5 could be made available in the newer versions, my membership and I would be most grateful!

Hi nlhealth

Which actions do you use in v5 for doing the PayPal payment ? PayPal Redirect only or also the PayPal Listener ?

And do they currently work ?

I use both, and they work very well.

Hi nlheath

Great, I will try to add the PayPal actions to ChronoForms v8 as soon as possible.

I will post here when this is done so that you can help us with the testing.

Thank you so much - that's great news!  Sorry to press this, but would it be possible for you to add the actions to CF7 as well?  I am trying to update all my CF5 forms to CF7 in preparation for upgrading to Joomla 5, since I can't update to CF8 until the upgrade is complete.

Thanks for adding it to V8.  Does it also include a Paypal listener?

No, the listener is not yet added, but if you can test the PayPal Redirect and confirm that it works in your scenario then the listener can follow in the next update.

Max, I was finally able to test the V8 PayPal Redirect.  When I test it in Sandbox mode, it works perfectly.  When I test it in Live mode, it appears to work - takes me to Paypal with the correct information, then redirects to the Success url or Cancel url correctly.  But the payment I enter in live mode is not recorded in Paypal, and is not charged against my account.  I have triple checked my client ID and secret key, and they are correct.  The Paypal page shows the correct merchant account name, so I know it's getting to the right client.  I hope you can help me get this working.

Does PayPal report successful payment in live mode after you do the payment ?

Which account do you use to pay ? I think that to test this correctly you need 2 accounts, the one for business which you use in your form, and another personal account to use for payment, and you need to login in different browsers, so your business account can be logged in on Chrome, but you do the payment using your personal account on Firefox

Please try that and let me know.

The form is set up with the client ID of the Paypal business account which should receive the payments.  To pay, I run the form and log into my personal Paypal account.  I was not logged in to the business account at all.  Paypal appears to accept the payment and returns me to the form specified in the Success url.  But when I log into the business account, my payment is not listed.  My personal Paypal account also does not show the payment, and it does not appear on my credit card transactions.  I just tried making the test payment again, making sure I was not in the Paypal business account, and it worked exactly the same way (meaning it didn't work).

but you use the same browser for both accounts or a different browser ?

OK, I went into a completely different browser (MS Edge) to run the test form.  I did not have my normal Firefox browser open at all, so I was not in the business account.  The test did exactly the same thing as before.  I log into Paypal with my personal credentials, it takes me to the checkout screen where it shows the correct amount and at the bottom shows a link for "Cancel and return to [my business name]", so I know it should be paying to the right account.  I click on "Continue to review order," and I return to the Success url.  No payment is recorded, either in the business account or my personal account.

if PayPal reports the payment is "complete" on the payment page but this happens then I suggest you send a message to their support asking about this behavior specifically, normally you get a confirmation message then get redirected and the order is recorded.

if they do not record the order then maybe there is something we do not know.

Max, I received a response from Paypal Merchant Technical Support about this issue.  I provided them with 3 debug ID's for transactions that reported success but did not process.  Here is their response:

---

From the debug ID and API request/response you shared, there is no PayPal processing error on this event. The Create Payment call to /v1/payments/payment succeeded, and PayPal returned a payment ID, an approval_url, and an execute link. The payment is in the “created” state, which means it was set up but never executed, so no funds were captured and no completed transaction would appear in your business account.

In this older Payments v1 flow, the process has three parts:

1. Your site calls /v1/payments/payment to create the payment (this part is working).

2. The customer is redirected to the approval_url so they can approve the payment on PayPal.

3. After PayPal sends the customer back to your return_url with a payer ID, your site must make a POST call to /v1/payments/payment/{payment_id}/execute to finalize the sale.

The debug information you provided shows step 1 completing successfully, but it does not show an execute call or any sale/related_resources attached to the payment. That is why your customers are not charged and the account never shows the transaction as completed: the upgraded component is creating the payment but is not successfully executing it after customer approval, or it is not handling the return from PayPal correctly (for example, not passing the payer ID and payment ID into the execute call).

To move this testing forward:

• Please confirm that your checkout flow is actually redirecting buyers to the approval_url returned by PayPal.

• After the buyer approves on PayPal and is redirected back, confirm that your return page is receiving both the payment ID and the payer ID and that the component is sending a POST request to the execute URL for that payment.

• If the new website version is meant to use the current checkout integration, we strongly recommend updating away from the deprecated Payments v1 API and using the newer PayPal Checkout API, as this will simplify the flow and avoid issues with older components.

---

It appears from this that the CF8 Paypal Redirect is not completing the payment process.  Please help.

Hi nlheath

I think you are correct, PayPal needs a charge confirmation, which can only happen with a PayPal Listener action, when you said that the Test mode works fine, I thought it's a problem with the Live setup.

When you say the test mode is working fine, do you find the charge in your PayPal account transactions ?

The Sandbox mode works fine, and the transactions appear in the sandbox account.  But Paypal tech support explained to me that transactions in sandbox mode do not require any return information from the website.  When I try live mode, the payments do not appear in the transactions.

Without the listener action the Paypal redirect is of no use, since it falsely reports to the website (and then to the user) that the transaction was successful.  For my website I currently just direct the user to Paypal with a url I cobbled together, and it works sometimes but not always.  The users are getting very frustrated with that.  Will you be providing a listener action anytime soon?  Please?

Hi nlheath

You had the PayPal Listener in v6 working, correct ?

No, I never used V6 at all.

Just to clarify, I used the Paypal Redirect and Paypal Listener in V5 for years.  To prepare for an upgrade from Joomla 3 to Joomla 4, I converted all my Chronoforms V5 forms to V7. Once the Joomla upgrade was complete, I installed Chronoforms V8 and tried to use its Paypal Redirect action for my forms involving a payment, but found that Paypal didn't record the payments. That's where it stands now.