Hey Guys,

How can we troubleshoot Paypal subscription errors? I have no clue on where to even start. I use subscriptions, payments via PayPal and Stripe. I'm getting several transactions per day via PayPal that are not being processed by IPS.

On the transaction it shows:

Transaction #10216

Transaction History

• Paid by PayPal

  04/25/25 07:13 PM

• Refused
  04/25/25 07:14 PM

  There was an error processing the payment. Please try a different payment method or contact us for assistance.
  

  This error does not seem to be from PayPal as the subscription on PayPal is being paid and a Recurring payment being created successfully within PayPal system.

In IPS, the transaction shows failed. No subscription information and only a pending invoice. If I mark it as paid, the subscription info is still not in the system for cancel or renewal. There is no way to manually input the Reoccurring transaction ID.

Any assistance in helping correct this would be greatly appreciated.

Where is it you are seeing that message?

1 hour ago, Marc said:

Where is it you are seeing that message?

It's on the Transaction details screen. PayPal shows this as a good transaction on their end, reoccurring payment ID assigned and valid..

Users say that they are getting an error when it comes to the receipt screen. Haven't been able to capture that error yet...

Had another fail this morning.

Edited April 28Apr 28 by Dazz

Taking a look at your logs, that "There was an error processing the payment. Please try a different payment method or contact us for assistance." is what is coming back from paypal itself. So you would need to contact them for assistance.

One thing I would say, is it may be worth checking to ensure there isnt an issue in one of your apps. The error log is showing that there are a few hooks loaded at that point from 3rd party items

I am seeing the exact same thing all of a sudden with my IPS community. I'd be glad to provide logs or a login to IPS staff to help troubleshoot.

As a note, it's been working fine for years and just started within the past few days.

You would have to ask paypal why they are returning that message. As mentioned above, the message being shown in your admin CP is from them

Mark,

Checking the logs it looks like one of the last updates may have caused issues with the PayPal webhook. Just like above... My Subscriptions have been working fine for years, with no changes in my theme, integrations, plugins, or apps. I had AI analyze my log files and this is what was returned from the logs.

5xx errors
All 22 of the server‑side failures were 500 errors, all hitting your PayPal webhook endpoint (…/paypal-webhook.php), for example:

[01/May/2025:05:50:29 -0500] "POST /applications/.../paypal-webhook.php HTTP/1.0" 500 1042 "-" "PayPal/AUHD-1.0-1"

Fix PayPal webhook handler
– Review your /paypal-webhook.php logs or add extra logging around line(s) causing the 500.
– Ensure your code gracefully handles malformed notifications or missing data.

Edited May 2May 2 by Dazz

Keep in mind you're not actually passing the error there to AI so they are just giving generic details on how to get more info. The same information would hold true that Marc has mentioned.

10 hours ago, Jim M said:

Keep in mind you're not actually passing the error there to AI so they are just giving generic details on how to get more info. The same information would hold true that Marc has mentioned.

Gotcha... However, now there is two of us with the same exact issue. How can we get someone to help look into this issue deeper. It does seem to be an issue with how the webhook (created by Invison) is communicating, or not, with Paypal. I disabled every single addon, plugin, integration, and app that I had enabled. Left them off for several days, and still had many failures.

cc: @Whiskey Bizness

9 hours ago, Dazz said:

Gotcha... However, now there is two of us with the same exact issue. How can we get someone to help look into this issue deeper. It does seem to be an issue with how the webhook (created by Invison) is communicating, or not, with Paypal. I disabled every single addon, plugin, integration, and app that I had enabled. Left them off for several days, and still had many failures.

cc: @Whiskey Bizness

As mentioned, you’ll need to contact PayPal as it is their error message which is being returned there, not ours. They will either provide what’s wrong on their side or more information.

Hey Jim,

I finally got a response from PayPal. According to PayPal they are not seeing any errors on their end. This is why the subscriptions are still being created on PayPal's end. Customers say it's failing when the system is doing the receipt.

"My name is Lisa and I will be assisting you today. We are not showing errors on our end, it appears the shopping cart may be suspending the profiles. Please let us know if you need any other assistance.

Lisa
Business Support
PayPal, Inc."

I know Invisions push is towards v5 right now, and support for v4 is limited. I tested for several days without any plugins or third-party apps installed. This issue started after one of the updates to Invision Community. For v5 I'm seriously considering moving to your cloud based Business, but I can't for a little while. I'd love to see if someone could help figure out these errors with the PayPal integration for subscriptions.

Do you by any chance have anything like cloudflare or similar that might be blocking requests to that location?

We would need to look further into this for you, however the access details on file appear to be incorrect or missing. Could you please update these details by visiting your client area, selecting the relevant purchase, then clicking "Review/Update Access Information" under the "Stored Access Information" section. 

We look forward to further assisting you. 

4 hours ago, Marc said:

Do you by any chance have anything like cloudflare or similar that might be blocking requests to that location?

We would need to look further into this for you, however the access details on file appear to be incorrect or missing. Could you please update these details by visiting your client area, selecting the relevant purchase, then clicking "Review/Update Access Information" under the "Stored Access Information" section. 

We look forward to further assisting you. 

Hey Marc,

Thanks for the quick response. I've updated the Access Information.

I do use Cloudflare, but those settings haven't changed in years either. The only change I've done to Cloudflare has been WAF settings to skip bot fight for the /API. Any idea what setting in CF could block requests?

11 minutes ago, Dazz said:

Hey Marc,

Thanks for the quick response. I've updated the Access Information.

I do use Cloudflare, but those settings haven't changed in years either. The only change I've done to Cloudflare has been WAF settings to skip bot fight for the /API. Any idea what setting in CF could block requests?

If you are not comfortable using CloudFlare's event logging to check for PayPal, I would recommend disabling it so that you can rule it out completely.

55 minutes ago, Jim M said:

If you are not comfortable using CloudFlare's event logging to check for PayPal, I would recommend disabling it so that you can rule it out completely.

Yeah, I'm not too familiar with it... I just created a rule for Paypal URI to bypass/skip CF for /paypal.php and /paypal-webhook.php.

Also, checking the Event Logs from the PayPal developer site, there are not any errors.

Would recommend disabling CloudFlare's security in general then.

54 minutes ago, Jim M said:

Would recommend disabling CloudFlare's security in general then.

I'm hesitant to completely disable CF's security... the community has been attacked in the past with bots trying to scrape the site and spam bots lately that brought the server down. I'm afraid to completely disable it.

Just now, Dazz said:

I'm hesitant to completely disable CF's security... the community has been attacked in the past with bots trying to scrape the site and spam bots lately that brought the server down. I'm afraid to completely disable it.

I'm afraid, CloudFlare is outside our scope of support and you admitted that you are not comfortable in it enough to review if PayPal is getting blocked so if we want to get to the bottom of the issue here with your PayPal issue, we will need it completely disabled. If having CloudFlare enabled trumps your PayPal issue here, that is fine but we're kind of at a standstill here on the PayPal issue till CloudFlare is disabled and we rule it out.

17 minutes ago, Jim M said:

I'm afraid, CloudFlare is outside our scope of support and you admitted that you are not comfortable in it enough to review if PayPal is getting blocked so if we want to get to the bottom of the issue here with your PayPal issue, we will need it completely disabled. If having CloudFlare enabled trumps your PayPal issue here, that is fine but we're kind of at a standstill here on the PayPal issue till CloudFlare is disabled and we rule it out.

I didn't say that I wasn't familiar with CloudFlare. You specifically stated event logging, in which I've never done anything with it. I am familiar with WAF and other security rules which are set to skip CF security for PayPal specific URI. But... I just went ahead and disabled CF completely.

6 minutes ago, Dazz said:

I didn't say that I wasn't familiar with CloudFlare. You specifically stated event logging, in which I've never done anything with it. I am familiar with WAF and other security rules which are set to skip CF security for PayPal specific URI. But... I just went ahead and disabled CF completely.

Thank you, please let us know if you still run into this issue.

7 hours ago, Jim M said:

Thank you, please let us know if you still run into this issue.

Hey Jim. I've had CF disabled all day. Just had someone 5 minutes ago fail transaction.

Transaction: Invoice #12804

PayPal shows:

This was confirmed and paid in PayPal along with a re-occurring subscription created. It shows pending in Invoices, but customer said they did get an error response.

Edited May 14May 14 by Dazz

Ive created a ticket on this for you, so we can get a closer look and see whats going on for you. Please ensure that all access details are up to date on file

5 hours ago, Marc said:

Ive created a ticket on this for you, so we can get a closer look and see whats going on for you. Please ensure that all access details are up to date on file

Thank you very much. Yes, all access details have been updated.

Thank you. I've escalated that for you

Hello,

I am also having this problem. How do I open a ticket as well.