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Enhance Your Customer Experience With PayPal’s Stored Payment Functionality

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Enabling your customers to securely save their payment information for future orders is a great way to reduce abandonment rates and encourage repeat purchases. We’ve updated the PayPal payment gateway to support stored credit cards, stored PayPal accounts, and Real-time Account Updater to ensure that your customers’ stored credentials are valid for every order.

Why offer stored payment methods?

Checkout friction is an important consideration in determining whether a customer completes or abandons an order. With stored payment methods, customers only need to enter their credentials once and save them to their storefront account. When they make additional orders in your store, they can select their stored payment method, skipping the Payment step of checkout and streamlining their purchase.

With PayPal, your customers can save their credit card details and PayPal accounts, combining ease of checkout with choice of payment method. Additionally, PayPal’s compatibility with the Payments API means that you can use stored payment methods in conjunction with apps from our App Marketplace or your own custom development to offer product subscriptions and recurring payments.

The PayPal payment gateway also includes Real-time Account Updater. This is an optional paid service offered by PayPal, which automatically checks stored cards and updates new card numbers and expiration dates. You can also configure Real-time Account Updater to automatically delete a stored card when it has been cancelled by the customer. By ensuring that your customers don’t need to manually edit an updated card or delete a closed card, they can rest assured that their stored payment options are valid for every purchase, and their subscriptions will never be interrupted by an expired card.

Lastly, your customers’ credit card information is securely submitted to PayPal, protecting their data while returning reliable updates to BigCommerce. With automatic updates, there is no risk of human error, creating a seamless and reliable experience.

Getting started with stored payments in PayPal

If you haven’t already, connect to the PayPal payment gateway to start using its stored payment features. Once you’ve integrated it in your store, go to the PayPal Settings tab of SettingsPayments and enable the settings for stored credit cards and PayPal accounts.

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After enabling stored cards, enable Real-time Account Updater in your PayPal merchant account, then return to your BigCommerce to start updating expired cards and deleting closed cards. Note that Real-time Account Updater does not update stored PayPal accounts.

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The final word

Stored payment methods provide a quick alternative to the standard checkout process, saving time and friction while encouraging repeat purchases. PayPal has all the tools you need to offer a seamless checkout experience, and lays the groundwork for offering recurring and subscription payments.

To learn more about requirements and setup instructions for PayPal’s stored payment features, see Connecting with PayPal in the Knowledge Base. For information on how stored payments work in your storefront, refer to Enabling Stored Payment Methods.

Stored payment methods and Real-time Account Updater are the latest additions to PayPal’s suite of features. Connect the PayPal payment gateway, and elevate the way you accept and process payments in your store!