Our donation page uses PayPal Standard. Donors pay, PayPal shows the money, but in CiviCRM the contribution stays Pending and no receipt is sent.
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Solved Community
CiviCRM: PayPal donations stay "Pending"
Solution
With PayPal Standard, CiviCRM only learns about the payment when PayPal calls back (IPN). If the contribution stays Pending, the callback never reached the site. Check in this order: 1. Is the site reachable from outside without a login? A staging password (Basic Auth), maintenance mode or a firewall rule blocks PayPal. 2. In PayPal → Account settings → IPN history: the messages for these payments show the HTTP status they got back. 3. In CiviCRM → Administer → System Settings → Payment Processors: the live processor must have the live account, not the sandbox one. Once IPN gets a 200, you can resend the failed messages from PayPal's IPN history – the contributions then complete and the receipts go out.
2 replies
With PayPal Standard, CiviCRM only learns about the payment when PayPal calls back (IPN). If the contribution stays Pending, the callback never reached the site. Check in this order: 1. Is the site reachable from outside without a login? A staging password (Basic Auth), maintenance mode or a firewall rule blocks PayPal. 2. In PayPal → Account settings → IPN history: the messages for these payments show the HTTP status they got back. 3. In CiviCRM → Administer → System Settings → Payment Processors: the live processor must have the live account, not the sandbox one. Once IPN gets a 200, you can resend the failed messages from PayPal's IPN history – the contributions then complete and the receipts go out.
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