So you have a client that you want to pay you an amount of money on a once yearly/monthly/weekly basis?
For whatever reason, you would prefer to send a PayPal recurring payment email link direct to their inbox rather than creating a page on your website with a PayPal button on it. You’ve heard that PayPal can facilitate that sort of transaction but you’ve spent hours sifting through the PayPal help and payments sections without finding a single reference to being able to accept recurring payments via email.
Step-1: Login to your PayPal account
Step-2: Click on Merchant Tools
Across the top of the main content
Step-3: Click on the Recurring Payments option
As the diagram below illustrates when you get into this section of the website there are 3 main options: Website Payments, Email
Nope, to create a recurring email payment on PayPal you go to the Website Payments section as illustrated in the diagram below:
Step-4: Create your button
There are a number of stages to this part of what you need to do. Don’t worry about the fact that you are creating a button for now. All will become clear in just a few minutes.
Make sure you select Subscriptions from the drop down menu.
Then complete the rest of the fields with your payment parameters. You can ignore the “Customize button” section.
Make sure to insert the correct Tax rate if you are charging VAT/GST or any tax.
Step 5: Check other parameters
There are two other sections (step 2 and 3 in the diagram below) where you can configure a number of different options. I didn’t have to change anything in those sections when I was setting up my payment
Then click the “Create Button” button.
Step-6: Grab your email link
On the page that loads you’ll find two tabs one for your website button and one for the Email equivalent that PayPal has generated for you.
Click the Email tab and then copy your email link (that’s the bit of text in blue as per the diagram below:
Have you ever used PayPal for requesting payments over email? Once off or recurring, tell us about your experiences in the comments below.