PayPal on your form
Donor Merchant renders official PayPal Smart Buttons on your donation form. Donors click, approve in the PayPal popup with their saved details, and they're done - no retyping addresses or card numbers. For a meaningful slice of donors, seeing PayPal is the difference between giving and bouncing.
How payments are recorded
- Orders are created server-side using PayPal's Orders v2 API, with the amount computed from your settings - never trusted from the browser.
- Capture happens server-to-server. After the donor approves, your server captures the payment directly with PayPal and only then records the donation as completed, storing the capture ID for reconciliation.
- Sandbox mode lets you test the whole flow with PayPal sandbox accounts before going live.
Stripe and PayPal, side by side
Enable both gateways and the form shows a simple payment method choice - Card or PayPal. Donors pick their comfort zone; everything lands in the same donor database, reports, and receipts.
You can also offer Venmo with the PayPal buttons, for US donors paying in US dollars. One-time gifts only; PayPal decides when the button appears.
Setup
Create a (free) PayPal REST app in the PayPal Developer dashboard, paste the client ID and secret into Donor Merchant → Settings → Payments → PayPal, and you're live. Step-by-step PayPal guide →