About Guest Checkout

By enabling Guest Checkout within your PayPal account settings, buyers will have the option to check out using a debit or credit card, without the need for a PayPal account login. 

Buyers don’t always have the option to make their purchases without using or creating a PayPal account. This option is presented based on several risk factors, including but not limited to the buyer's PayPal purchase history, PayPal cookies stored on the buyer's computer, the buyer's location, and/or a credit assessment.

Products Without Guest Checkout Functionality

The following products don’t offer a guest checkout experience: 

• CreateBillingAgreement, CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile, PayPal Checkout using automatic payments, or automatic payments. You can find these references in your API logs. If you're unsure whether your system uses these API operations, please contact your developer or cart provider to check your logs. 
• PayPal HTML Installment, Subscription, and Automatic Billing buttons. To have guest checkout for these products, you’ll need the Enhanced automatic payments product. 
• REST automatic payments.
• PayPal HTML Donation button where the checkout is an automatic payment.

Guest Checkout Requirements

Before you can enable Guest Checkout in Checkout, you’ll need to meet the following requirements: 

• Have a confirmed email address.
• Set PayPal Account Optional to On within your PayPal settings. 

With a Checkout custom-coded solution, there’s an additional step: 

• Set SOLUTIONTYPE=Sole in your initial SetExpressCheckout API call. 
  • If you’re using a third-party shopping cart, you’ll need to work with them or your developer to implement this variable. 
  • If SOLUTIONTYPE=Sole is passed in the SetExpressCheckout API, Guest Checkout will be enabled. 
  • In order for SOLUTIONTYPE=Sole to work, you must have PayPal Account Optional set to On within your PayPal Account Settings (see below). 
  • Many third-party carts provide an Enable Guest Checkout option in the Administration view of their Checkout module.

Here’s how to enable the PayPal account optional setting: 

1. Go to your Account Settings.
2. Click Website payments on the left. 
3. Click Update across from “'Website preferences.” 
4. Select On below “PayPal account optional.”