PayPal

Overview

The Akeeba Social Login - PayPal integration plugin allows user on your site to use their PayPal account to login or register a user account on your site.

Setup on PayPal

DISCLAIMER: This part of our documentation describing the interaction with a third party service is for information purposes only. It should be treated as indicative and used at your own risk. Akeeba Ltd can only attest that this part of the documentation has been the faithful transcription of the steps we took at the time of its writing. We strongly recommend that you consult the documentation of the third party service for accurate instructions. Should the behavior of the third party service differ from what is published in our documentation you should consult the support of the third party service provider. Do not seek support from us for such matters; Akeeba Ltd cannot provide support for third party services, is not responsible for or notified about any changes in said services, nor is it obligated to update the documentation pursuant such changes.

Before you can use PayPal login on your site you must create a PayPal "app". Even though it sounds scary, a PayPal App is simply a way for you to get a set of access codes which let you identify your site on PayPal.

⚠️ You need to have a business PayPal account verified with an email, and have enabled Two-Factor Authentication for it. This is a requirement imposed by PayPal before it can let you create a PayPal app.

Go to https://developer.paypal.com/dashboard/applications/live and make sure you are logged into the PayPal developer site with your business PayPal account.

At the top right there is a toggle between Sandbox and live. By default, this is set to Sandbox after logging in. You must set the toggle to Live. SocialLogin does not support sandbox accounts.

Click on Create App

App Name: your site name

Click on Create App

Copy the Client ID. This goes into the plugin's PayPal Client ID field.

Click the eye icon next to Secret Key 1 and copy it. This goes into the plugin's PayPal Client Secret field.

ℹ️ Both the client ID and the secret key appear as two lines in your browser, but they must be copied as a single, contiguous string without newlines or spaces in between. To copy them correctly use the copy (overlapping squares) icon next to them.

Click the three dots under the gear column next to your application's name and click on Edit to open a page with additional settings.

Under Other features select Log In With PayPal.

Now you see a link, Advanced Settings next to it. Click on it.

Click on Add another URL

Enter http://www.example.com/index.php?option=com_ajax&group=sociallogin&plugin=paypal&format=raw where http://www.example.com MUST be replaced with your site's URL. For example, if your site is accessible at http://www.abrandnewsite.com/mysite then the Callback URL field must be http://www.abrandnewsite.com/mysite/index.php?option=com_ajax&group=paypal&plugin=twitch&format=raw. Click on Save under the URL you entered.

Under Information requested from customers select Full Name, Email, and PayPal account ID (payer ID).

Enter the URLs to the pages of your site in the Privacy Policy and User Agreement URL fields.

Make sure that “Enable customers who have not yet confirmed their email with PayPal to log in to your app.” is NOT selected.

Click on Save at the bottom of the popup.

Click on Save Changes.

Plugin options

PayPal Client ID Enter the Client ID for your custom PayPal Application here. See the previous section for creating a PayPal Application.

PayPal Client Secret Enter the Consumer Secret (API Secret) for your custom PayPal Application here. See the previous section for creating a PayPal Application.

Allow social login to non-linked accounts When enabled allows users to log in despite not having linked their PayPal account to their site user account. Their PayPal account's email address must be the same as the email account they use on your site.

Create new user accounts Creates a new Joomla! user when a user tries to log in via PayPal but there is no Joomla! user account associated with that email or PayPal User ID. If user registration is disabled no account will be created and an error will be raised. The new Joomla! user will have a username derived from the PayPal account's name, the same email address as the PayPal account and a long, random password (which the user can change once they have logged in). Set this to No to prevent creation of user accounts through PayPal login.

Ignore Joomla! setting for creating user accounts When both this option and the Create new user accounts option above are enabled a new user will always be created, even if you have disabled user registration in the options of Joomla's Users page. This is useful to prevent anyone from registering to your site unless they have a PayPal account.

Bypass user validation Only applies when creating new user accounts. When enabled the new user will be created active, without going through the Joomla! user account validation. This means that no account activation email will be sent to the user or the administrators of the Joomla! site. This makes perfect sense since PayPal has already verified that the user is in control of the email address they are using with their PayPal account.

Button styling When enabled custom CSS for login, link and unlink button styling will be output to the page header. Disable this option if you intend to use your own CSS to style the buttons.

Icon class The icon CSS class to use in the login, link and unlink buttons. Useful to use an icon font such as FontAwesome or Glyphicons to render the logo. If it's left empty, a PNG image with the PayPal logo will be used instead.

Login buttons can be shown in In which part(s) of your site do you want to allow showing the Social Login buttons? For more information on how this feature works please consult the “Hiding in the frontend or backend” documentation page.