latest stable versions: v150827 (changelog)

Old Forums (READ-ONLY): The community now lives at WP Sharks™. If you have an s2Member® Pro question, please use our new Support System.

Encrypted PayPal Subscription Button Error

Home Forums Community Forum Encrypted PayPal Subscription Button Error

This topic contains 42 replies, has 13 voices. Last updated by  Jason (Lead Developer) 3 years, 2 months ago.

Topic Author Topic
Posted: Friday Aug 16th, 2013 at 6:15 pm #56055

I’m trying to get a few PayPal subscription buttons set up with s2Member using the button code generator. Plain buy now buttons (specific post/page) works fine, but the subscription ones for Level #1 Access get this error on PayPal:

Sorry — your last action could not be completed

If you were making a purchase or sending money, we recommend that you check both your PayPal account and your email for a transaction confirmation after 30 minutes.

If you came to this page from another website, please return to that site (don’t use your browser’s Back button) and restart your activity.

If you came from PayPal’s website, click the PayPal logo in the upper-left corner to return to our home page and restart your activity. You might have to log in again.

This only happens while encryption is enabled in the s2Member PayPal settings, if I disable that the buttons work fine. The buy now button I mentioned works fine regardless of encryption. Here’s an example of the subscription button code that’s having trouble:

[s2Member-PayPal-Button level="1" ccaps="" desc="3 Month Subscription" ps="paypal" lc="" cc="USD" dg="0" ns="1" custom="example.com" ta="0" tp="0" tt="D" ra="261.00" rp="3" rt="M" rr="1" rrt="" rra="1" image="default" output="button" /]

List Of Topic Replies

Viewing 25 replies - 1 through 25 (of 42 total)
Author Replies
Author Replies
Posted: Saturday Aug 17th, 2013 at 7:57 pm #56081

I am also having the exact same problem on my site. I have noticed this is a recurring issue after digging through the forums here.
A fix for this is needed.
Thanks for your help.
Brett

Posted: Tuesday Aug 20th, 2013 at 3:37 am #56221
Bruce
Username: Bruce
Staff Member

Thank you for reporting this important issue.

You said this happens when you turn on Button Encryption in s2Member’s settings. Do you have Encryption set up at PayPal per the documentation in that section?

See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› Account Details -› Enable Button Encryption?

Posted: Tuesday Aug 20th, 2013 at 8:29 am #56252

I’m not sure about Catherine but I have set up the plug in as described on both the wordpress and paypal end.
I’ve described all the steps I have taken to try to remedy this on this post:

Thanks for the reply.

Posted: Tuesday Aug 20th, 2013 at 8:45 am #56254

If it would help, I would be more than willing to let one of S2’s techs log into the site, or I can send over the log files .
Thanks again.

Posted: Tuesday Aug 20th, 2013 at 1:38 pm #56269

Yes, I had tried both with and without encryption required on PayPal’s end, it didn’t make any difference either way.

Posted: Tuesday Aug 20th, 2013 at 5:48 pm #56278

Bruce, I’m wondering if this is a bug–as our website was working fine for months and then suddenly this just started happening to us now too. We haven’t changed anything.

Posted: Tuesday Aug 20th, 2013 at 6:01 pm #56280
Staff Member
@cat@momentumoptionstrading.com
@bmiddaugh

Thanks for reporting this important issue.

This appears to be a problem on the PayPal® side of things. There is another bug report here; and PayPal seems to be working on it as this point. I will contact PayPal MTS about this also, but I suggest that each of you do the same, because often times it will take more than a single person having trouble to get something done.

Please report this here: http://www.paypal.com/mts/


When I hear back from PayPal® on this, I will update this thread.
Until then, I suggest turning off the encrypted button feature in s2Member®.

NOTE: This error could not be reproduced against a Sandbox/Developer account; but we DID reproduce the issue against a live PayPal account. Not good, PayPal needs to have this corrected ASAP.

NOTE: I was also able to reproduce this bug against a live PayPal account using a PayPal Button generated not through the BMCreateButton API, but with a button generated through the PayPal Merchant interface even.

Posted: Tuesday Aug 20th, 2013 at 6:07 pm #56283

Thanks Jason.

Posted: Friday Aug 23rd, 2013 at 11:37 am #56552
Moderator
PayPal® Ticket Reference (#130823-000193), as submitted by Jason.
Hi there. I’m the lead developer for s2Member®, a popular plugin for WordPress that integrates with PayPal Standard Buttons. We have had MANY reports from site owners that encrypted PayPal Buttons are not working.

Please see this thread where I’ve documented the bug.
http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/encrypted-paypal-subscription-button-error/#post-56280

The problem: If a customer clicks an encrypted PayPal Button (and they are NOT logged into their PayPal account yet); they see nothing but a vague error page, and checkout is NOT possible at all.

If the customer is already logged into their PayPal account, they can get to the checkout form when clicking an encrypted button; but this is definitely NOT ideal. You guys currently have MANY merchants out there who are losing lots of money because their encrypted PP buttons are simply broken right now.

I was unable to reproduce this in a Sandbox environment, but it’s definitely happening on the live site. I’ve confirmed this from numerous sources and I’ve tested it myself; even against buttons created within the PayPal UI; as well as through buttons created via the BMCreateButton API too.

Posted: Friday Aug 23rd, 2013 at 12:51 pm #56554

What is the downside of turning off encryption? I guess PayPal changed something since my same button has been working for over a year without any problems.

Ideally I’d like to keep encryption turned on but soon I fear I will have to do something because people want to sign up. Another option I guess is disallowing monthly subscriptions and only allowing one time payments until it gets fixed. None of these are great options but I need to be back up and running.

Makes me want to look at Authorize.net or even Stripe. Anyone have any thoughts there?

Posted: Monday Aug 26th, 2013 at 2:38 pm #58695

I hadnt seen these posts, have had exact same problem, always had all the encryption on, suddenly paypal starts not accepting my buttons saying theyre unencrypted.

Contacted paypal and recieved a message today saying,

“Have you checked to see if the certificates have expired? Most certificates only have a life of one year.”

Does this mean s2member has encryption certificates that may have expired? and so paypal isnt recognising them, I have noticed my site produces identical code whether i have s2member set to encrypt buttons or not, surely this isnt right? and might be causing problem

Posted: Monday Aug 26th, 2013 at 3:56 pm #58699

Jake’s post is very interesting info to think about. Our membership website is exactly the same thing–we’ve been using S2 successfully for a little over a year now but suddenly the PayPal buttons stopped working. One of the people wishing to join our membership site said they were logged into their PayPal account when they tried to subscribe to our site, but got the error messages anyway. So the above “fix” didn’t work for them. Perhaps the solution is in creating new buttons then? If we try creating new buttons, will that cause existing members who cancel not to have the automated end date and demotion process triggered?

Posted: Tuesday Aug 27th, 2013 at 12:30 pm #58736

Yes the fix didnt work for me either. logged in or not my members get the error this seller does not accept unencrypted payments.

I definately think the code needs to be looked into, as I said regardless of my s2member settings the button generator generates the same code, whether i want encrypted or not, and the code IS unencrypted, as i tried editing myself and was able to change the payment amount to 1penny instead of what it should be. So Ive had an unencrypted button the last year and didnt even know obviously, or s2 has very bad encryption.

What should an ENCRYPTED button from S2 look like? can anyone show me theirs? Im struggling with all this, had over a week with buttons off my site now and having to do invoices manually. I did risk and try with the paypal set to unencrypted for a day, but had no notifications from paypal/s2 as to what members had paid for.

Posted: Tuesday Aug 27th, 2013 at 7:18 pm #58740
Y
Username: Cobra

I have the same problem. The subscription button worked fine for almost 2 years, now suddenly stop working. When click it, I got “Sorry — your last action could not be completed” error on PayPal web site.

Disable Button Encryption, I got “The seller doesn’t accept unencrypted button” error. So it doesn’t solve problem.

Please help!

Posted: Tuesday Aug 27th, 2013 at 7:25 pm #58741
Y
Username: Cobra

Well, at least let me know how to create “Unencrypted” button? Thanks.

Posted: Tuesday Aug 27th, 2013 at 7:33 pm #58742
Y
Username: Cobra

Sorry, never mind, I disabled encryption in s2Member then went to PayPal site, to allow non-encrypted. It seems worked. But still the encryption is a problem, need to be fixed. Thanks.

Posted: Wednesday Aug 28th, 2013 at 11:06 am #58803

I’m also affected as of today. Some days ago it still worked. Only happens on subscription button!
My income completly broke down …..

NEED REMEDY SOON

okay, after disabling encryption, emptying all caches and recreating the button it started working again. I rather deem this error is related to s2member.

First after switching off encryption, my button completley disappeared on my website (was still visible on the edit page though).
Not having the buttons encrypted is not nice though however…. I had the same button for well over 2 years now….

I have googled about this error, and it doesn’t seem any other wordpress plugin users got this problem – the bug is rather reported by people who want to pay at paypal and not website coders/owners.

  • This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by  extremecarver.
  • This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by  extremecarver.
  • This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by  extremecarver.
Posted: Tuesday Sep 3rd, 2013 at 7:59 pm #59034
Cary Ganz
Username: cganz

Can someone explain how to fix this problem. It seems that you need to turn off encryption on the PayPal side. Wish someone would put together a simple step by step to get this done. Would really be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

Posted: Wednesday Sep 4th, 2013 at 12:06 am #59055
Staff Member

I was in contact with PayPal again today by phone. PayPal is working on a resolution to this, and I’m hoping it will be soon. I will post further updates when I hear back from them.

PayPal techs are investigating two examples I posted here that reproduce the issue.
http://gator3104.hostgator.com/~wsksdev/jason/pp-be-test.php

These are encrypted subscription buttons generated from two different live PayPal accounts. These only work about 1 out of 10 times they are clicked (of course this will hopefully change as PayPal works to resolve the problem). Most of the time when we’ve tested them they result in the following error “Sorry — your last action could not be completed”.

I’ve tested these in different browsers while logged into my PP account; and also while I’m not logged into my PP account. I’ve tried setting required variables only, and I’ve tried setting all possible variables. No difference. I’ve also tried deleting cookies and browser temp files; no difference. I’ve also tried generating these buttons through the Button Manager API, same error: “Sorry — your last action could not be completed”.

If any of you are in contact w/ PayPal to report this issue yourselves, please ask them to also review Support Ticket Reference ID: 130823-000193 (reported by Jason Caldwell w/ s2Member.com). These examples along with other supporting documentation have been made available in that private thread; which also references this thread here at s2Member.com.


Disabling s2Member’s Button Encryption feature is recommended until this is resolved.

See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› Account Details -› Button Encryption

While Button Encryption is disabled, we recommend that you closely monitor incoming transactions for any fraudulent activity, as the risk of fraud increases slightly without this high level encryption being applied to the HTML output in these PayPal Buttons.


I should also note: this issue does NOT impact s2Member® Pro Forms in any way.
Posted: Wednesday Sep 4th, 2013 at 10:26 am #59107

If I click on those buttons it just asks me to log in to complete the transaction. This is different to the errors i get about paypal encrypted buttons etc on my thread

http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/paypal-buttons-stopped-working/#post-59106

Posted: Friday Sep 6th, 2013 at 2:56 am #59188
Tom
Username: halasyt

Hi Jason, Cristián,

I would like to ask that when you become aware of such a huge problem that possibly affects everyone, please send out a letter to all of your customers notifying them of this.

I was wondering why I didn’t have any subscribers for the last few days, until someone wrote me telling me something is wrong, and yes, none of the buy buttons work on my site anymore. These few days of no sales could have been avoided if you would have kept us up-to-date on such a serious issue.

Tom

Posted: Sunday Sep 8th, 2013 at 11:27 am #59253

Problems escalated for me. I had to turn off all encryptions to be able to get any payments again, yet half the customers arnt even recieving the email/link to complete their signup after payment, agh and the unencrypted button are making the page take foreverrrrrr to load, know its them as page loads right up if remove them. WHY o WHY s2? everything was perfect for a year! now it sucks, is this a ploy to encourage people to upgrade to S2 pro and other payment gateways!

  • This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by  Jake Kennedy.
Posted: Monday Sep 9th, 2013 at 6:49 am #59298
Tom
Username: halasyt

I have the most expensive version of S2, it’s not that.
Regardless, I hope it’s fixed ASAP.

Posted: Tuesday Sep 10th, 2013 at 3:13 pm #59411
Staff Member
@halasyt

Hi Jason, Cristián,

I would like to ask that when you become aware of such a huge problem that possibly affects everyone, please send out a letter to all of your customers notifying them of this.

I was wondering why I didn’t have any subscribers for the last few days, until someone wrote me telling me something is wrong, and yes, none of the buy buttons work on my site anymore. These few days of no sales could have been avoided if you would have kept us up-to-date on such a serious issue.

Tom

This did go out in an email notice to all s2Member users both free and Pro users also.
http://www.s2member.com/kb/paypal-button-encryption-problems/
You can subscribe to updates from your Dashboard, and this notice is also visible in everyone’s Dashboard.

Posted: Wednesday Sep 11th, 2013 at 12:47 pm #59454

I haven’t even gotten a chance to use this yet due to this problem-bug with functionality.
I have to have my site running by October 1st.
I’ve paid for the upgrade to the functionality but can’t use any of it.
Are there any options for refunds?
Thanks for all the attempts to work this issue out.

Viewing 25 replies - 1 through 25 (of 42 total)

This topic is closed to new replies. Topics with no replies for 2 weeks are closed automatically.

Old Forums (READ-ONLY): The community now lives at WP Sharks™. If you have an s2Member® Pro question, please use our new Support System.

Contacting s2Member: Please use our Support Center for bug reports, pre-sale questions & technical assistance.