PayPal Web Payment Standard: forcing PayPal account creation now?

Question

Had a nice little custom button with a few parameters I was POSTing to PayPal (and getting POSTed back via IPN) a few years ago working fine. Payments were disabled for several years, but now my client wants to resume subscriptions with their new campaign.

I switched back to the sandbox hostname/merchant accounts, did a sandbox transaction with a test Visa card, and all was well.

Switched it to the live hostname/merchant account, went to do another test with a real Visa, but noticed that not only has the real PayPal site been completely rebranded/redesigned, they now seem to be forcing you to create a PayPal account: on the sandbox, there's a blurb with a link that says "continue" which takes you right to the credit card/billing information (this is identical to what the live PayPal site used to look like a few years ago).

NOTE: The merchant account has changed; I'm not sure if that matters or not and/or if there's any settings in there I need to change.

Question: is this the way it is now with PayPal? I can't seem to find any official information that says yes/no. Besides the Express, is there any other IPN method that'll work here or is this a policy thing at PayPal? I'd hate to rewrite my working/tested code, but this isn't going to fly with my client.

Answer 1

Yahel's answer is incorrect: I called PayPal, and they explained that the following conditions must be met in order to accept non-PayPal payments:

• The business email address must be confirmed. You can check by going to Profile > Email.

• PayPal Account Optional must be checked:

  1. Go to www.paypal.com.au and log in to your Business account.
  2. Click 'Profile icon' near the top right of the page (next to "Log out" button)
  3. Click "Profile & settings"
  4. Click ‘My selling tools.’
  5. Click ‘Update' beside 'Website preferences.’
  6. Select 'On' under 'PayPal Account Optional' near the bottom of the page.
  7. Click 'Save.'