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How to Activate PayPal Commerce

PayPal Commerce is Charitable’s modern PayPal integration – a single connection that lets your donors pay with PayPal, Venmo, Pay Later, credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. This page walks you through activating it on your site and what to do if it isn’t showing up in your gateway list.

PayPal Commerce replaces the older PayPal Standard, Express Checkout, and Card Processing setups with one integration that also unlocks Venmo, Pay Later, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Donors see modern wallet buttons and a faster checkout, and you handle refunds and recurring donations directly inside WordPress without juggling multiple PayPal products or accounts. For the full background, see Introducing PayPal Commerce.

Available in Charitable Pro 1.8.15+.

Activate PayPal Commerce

  1. In your WordPress admin, go to Charitable → Settings → Payment Gateways.
  2. Find PayPal Commerce in the gateway list and click Enable.
  3. Click Settings next to PayPal Commerce, then click Connect with PayPal.
  4. PayPal opens in a new window. Sign in to your PayPal business account (or create one) and approve the connection.
  5. PayPal redirects you back to WordPress. The connection panel will show your merchant ID and the capabilities granted to your account.

That’s it – your donation forms will immediately offer PayPal Commerce as a payment option.

Test Mode – PayPal Commerce respects Charitable’s standard Test Mode toggle. Leave Test Mode on while validating the donor flow, then turn it off when you’re ready to accept live donations.

Don’t see PayPal Commerce in your gateway list?

To keep things predictable, only one PayPal integration is shown per site at a time. If your site is already set up with the existing PayPal gateway (PayPal Standard / IPN), PayPal Commerce stays hidden by default and the gateway list shows your existing PayPal configuration instead.

Charitable decides which one to show during the 1.8.15 upgrade by checking two signals:

  • Is the existing PayPal gateway currently enabled in your settings?
  • Are there any prior donations on your site that were processed through the existing PayPal gateway?

If either of those is true, your site keeps its existing PayPal configuration and PayPal Commerce is hidden.

This is the right behavior for the vast majority of sites – running both integrations side-by-side complicates donor experience and accounting. But if you’d like to switch to PayPal Commerce anyway, you can.

Switching to PayPal Commerce

Before you switch – read this

If you have active recurring donations running through the existing PayPal gateway, please read this carefully:

  • PayPal will continue billing your donors on the schedule you set up. None of your donors will be cancelled.
  • However, after switching, Charitable will no longer record those renewals in your dashboard, because the IPN handler for the existing PayPal gateway is disabled when you switch.

If reporting on those renewals matters to you, cancel the recurring donations in your PayPal dashboard before switching. Or contact our support team – we can help you migrate active donors when our migration tool ships in a future release.

If you only have one-time historical donations and no live recurring, switching has no donor-facing impact.

Three ways to switch

Pick the path that matches your access level. All three accomplish the same thing.

Path 1 – WP-CLI (recommended for developers and agencies)

If you have shell access to your server (SSH, hosting CLI, etc.), this is the cleanest path:

wp charitable paypal force-commerce-tier --confirm-recurring-impact

The --confirm-recurring-impact flag is required when you have active recurring donations on the existing PayPal gateway. The command will refuse to run otherwise, with a count of how many donations would be affected.

Preview what would happen with the --dry-run flag before committing:

wp charitable paypal force-commerce-tier --dry-run

After the switch, go to Charitable → Settings → Payment Gateways and complete the Connect with PayPal flow on the PayPal Commerce card to start accepting donations.

Path 2 – functions.php filter (for developers without shell access)

Add this snippet to your theme’s functions.php or a small custom plugin:

add_filter( 'pre_option_charitable_paypal_user_tier', function () {
    return 'commerce';
} );

The filter runs at every get_option() call, so PayPal Commerce becomes visible immediately on the next admin page load.

This is a runtime override – it doesn’t change the stored value in your database. The override stays in effect as long as the filter is in your code; remove the filter and the original visibility is restored. If you want to make the change permanent without keeping the filter, leave it in place to verify everything works, then run the WP-CLI command from Path 1.

Path 3 – SQL update (for hosting-panel / phpMyAdmin users)

If you’re comfortable with phpMyAdmin, Adminer, or your hosting panel’s database tool, run this query against your WordPress database:

UPDATE wp_options
SET option_value = 'commerce'
WHERE option_name = 'charitable_paypal_user_tier';

Replace wp_options with your actual table prefix if it isn’t the default. The change is immediate – refresh the gateway settings page and PayPal Commerce will appear.

⚠️ Reminder: if you have active recurring donations on the existing PayPal gateway, PayPal will continue billing donors but Charitable will not record those renewals. Cancel them in PayPal first, or proceed knowing the trade-off.

What happens after switching

  • The existing PayPal gateway disappears from your gateway settings list. Its saved API credentials remain in the database in case a future reverse path is added.
  • PayPal Commerce appears in the gateway list. Its Connect with PayPal button is enabled. Click it to begin onboarding with PayPal.
  • Until you complete onboarding, PayPal Commerce shows a “not connected” status and donors will not see PayPal as a payment option on the donation form.
  • Donations recorded before the switch are not affected – they keep their original gateway tag and stay visible in your reports.

How to undo a switch

There is no in-UI undo button. The switch is one-way under the current model.

If you switched by mistake or hit an unexpected issue, please contact our support team. We can help restore your previous configuration directly, and we’re tracking these requests to inform whether we should build a proper reverse path in a future release.

Need help?

If any of this is unclear, or you’d like a hand running the switch, our support team is happy to walk you through it. Open a ticket from your Charitable account and mention “PayPal Commerce activation” – we’ll handle the rest.

Still have questions? We’re here to help!

Submit a Support Ticket
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