PayPal (by request)

PayPal is switched on for an account by request only. What that means, how to ask, and how it works once it's on.

Every TipPage account takes card tips through Stripe, and that is the only payment method a new account is offered. PayPal isn’t shown in Settings → Payments unless we’ve switched it on for your account. Accounts that already had a PayPal address linked keep it; nothing changes for them.

Asking for it

Email support@tippage.com from the address on the account owner’s TipPage login, with your TipPage name, and we’ll switch it on and let you know. The PayPal panel then appears on the Payments tab, and before you can save an address it asks you to acknowledge that PayPal tips are less protected than card tips. They are, in four ways:

• A banned viewer is charged first. A card tip is authorised, checked against your ban list, and only then captured, so a banned donor is never charged. PayPal can’t hold first: a banned PayPal tip is captured and then refunded by hand.
• A held tip is already paid. The review queue holds a card tip’s authorisation until a moderator decides. A PayPal tip is captured before review, so rejecting it keeps the money unless you refund it.
• Refunds and disputes happen in PayPal. TipPage can’t refund a PayPal tip for you, and a PayPal dispute runs under PayPal’s rules, not Stripe’s.
• It’s less private, in both directions. PayPal payments are direct between two PayPal accounts, so PayPal shows each side the other’s details: you see the tipper’s name and email in your PayPal activity, and they see your account name on their receipt. On a personal account that is your legal name, so use a Business account.

There’s no TipPage fee on PayPal tips; PayPal deducts its own receiving fee inside your account. A tip page in UAH, INR or ZAR can’t offer PayPal at all, because PayPal doesn’t take those currencies.

Setting it up

Once it’s on, PayPal setup is one field: the email of the PayPal account that should receive tips. No OAuth, no redirect - tips are paid straight into that account.

Three things to know

• Confirming the email doesn’t check the PayPal account. It proves the inbox is yours, not that PayPal can take payments there. If the account can’t receive payments, tips fail on the viewer’s side, so send yourself a small tip to be sure.
• One processor is active at a time. With both PayPal and card payouts set up, the Active on your tipping page selector in the panel picks which one the tip page uses. Viewers see one or the other, never a choice.
• Reports list PayPal tips under their own heading. They count the refunds you’ve marked in TipPage, so a refund issued in PayPal but never marked here is invisible to the report.

Refunding a PayPal tip

Refund the transaction in PayPal first (the tip’s row on the Tips page shows the transaction ID to search for), then press Mark refunded on the row so the ledger matches and the donor is emailed.

Disconnecting

Disconnect in the PayPal panel removes the email. If card payouts are set up they take over; otherwise tipping is off until a processor is connected. The panel stays, so you can link a different address later.