Cannot connect PayPal

Hello norwichdesigner, thanks for reaching out to the Community

We don't have any reported issues with the PayPal connection in QuickBooks at the moment. 

If you are seeing the message on PayPal's site after being re-directed from QuickBooks (during the re-connection process), please contact PayPal directly. It may be that the security settings on your account need updating or verifying before proceeding with third-party connections. 

If you need any help following this, please reach back out to us below. 

I have been in touch with PayPal and they are telling me "the block is not being directly applied by PayPal and the issue appears to be on the QuickBooks side"

I have the same problem.

I followed the advise and I switched from Bing to Chrome, Unfortunately this does not fix the problem. I still get the same error message. I am in Germany and connecting PayPal Germany.

Please, somebody at QBO help!

Thank you for joining this thread, WU_Sadra.

When connecting PayPal with QuickBooks Online, make sure that no other user has already connected it. Verify that you have primary or company admin privileges in QuickBooks Online (as only admins or accountants can link the app), and ensure that the PayPal credentials belong to a PayPal admin user, not just an authorized user.

If the issue persists, I recommend contacting our customer support team . They have the tools to review your account and identify the root cause of this issue.

Here's how:

1. Go to the Help (?) icon.
2. Select Contact Us.
3. Enter your concern, then click Let's talk.
4. Choose a way to connect with us:

• Start a chat with a support expert.
• Get a callback from the next available expert.

Please let me know if you require any further assistance regarding your PayPal in QuickBooks Online. I'm always here to help.

I have the same problem, have tried Chrome, Chrome incognito, Edge and the mobile app but nothing works.

Have you managed to get it working yet?

Thanks 

I appreciate you joining this thread and informing us beforehand that you've already attempted to access QuickBooks in a private window and tried other supported browsers to work with PayPal, usersuzanne.

I see the urgency of resolving this issue immediately. However, we've received a similar report regarding connecting PayPal. Therefore, I suggest contacting our Support Team to have your company details added to the list of affected users. Here's how:

1. Sign in to your QuickBooks Online company.
2. Select Help (?).
3. In QB Assistant, enter the topic you need help with. You can also enter questions.
4. In Search, select Contact us to connect with a live support agent.
    

In the meantime, you can manually upload your transactions. Here's how:

1. Log in to your bank website and get your transactions and map them using a CSV file. 
2. Sign in to your to QBO account or Transactions menu.
3. Select the Link account▼ dropdown, then select Upload from file. Note: If your account is not connected yet to online banking, select Upload from file.
4. Select Drag and drop or select files and select the file you downloaded from your bank. Then select Continue.

For the information and steps on importing bank data, we can visit this article: Manually upload transactions into QuickBooks Online.

Additionally, you can use these articles when reviewing and reconciling accounts in QuickBooks. 

• Categorise and match online bank transactions in QuickBooks Online.
• Learn the reconcile workflow in QuickBooks.

If you have more concerns about connecting accounts and handling transactions, please know that I'm here to help you.

Hi Suzanne,

No, I just tried again and it still doesn't work. It is fine from the PayPal side, but then Quickbooks pops the error message. 

I find the QB reply really unhelpful. They know it is a problem and they can't pass it on, but instead I have to spend more time explaining the whole thing to customer support :(

Thankfully, we have very few transactions coming in via PayPal. I am waiting for them to finally hook up our regular bank since I spend considerable time every month importing bank transactions from over 10 bank accounts manually.

Have a great day and let me know, if you have an update.

Sandra

I too have the same issue.   I've been trying for 3 days to connect but keep getting the message that it doesn't recognise me.  Too many people with the send problem ..response from Quickbooks is not good enough. 

Short update!

I spent an hour with customer support trying to connect from a different computer, disconnecting the account and trying to reconnect. Nothing works.

Customer support now promised to escalate it to the banking team.

Fingers crossed,

Sandra

I’m having the same problem. 
Tried different browsers but still no luck. 
I have a lot of transactions through PayPal so don’t want to upload manually. 
Please look into it. 

Hello everyone.

I can only imagine how difficult it must be to encounter connectivity issues, as they can disrupt your workflow, particularly when downloading transactions from PayPal to QuickBooks Online.

After reviewing our system, I discovered and confirmed that we have an ongoing issue with PayPal connectivity to QuickBooks Online. Rest assured, our engineers are currently looking for the root cause to develop a permanent solution.

With that, I recommend contacting our Support Team using the steps provided by my colleague @SarahannC above. This is to ensure that you are added to the list of affected users and receive important updates on this issue.

I also understand that some of you prefer not to manually import transactions from PayPal to QuickBooks, but it is currently the only alternative way we can think of to upload your transactions while our engineers work on this issue.

If you have other concerns or follow-up questions about banking, just leave them in the comment section below. I'll be here to assist. Keep safe!

Hello, tried a couple of times today.

1st time - it said "bank connection down"

2nd time it said "Paypal (for UK users) is under maintenance until 05/04/2024 at 09:30:00

Have tried a couple of times today but still not working, back to original message about not being able to verify you.

No timescales listed for resolution anymore.

Hi Suzanne,

It is extremely annoying. I can log into paypal from QB. I successfully use MFA. QB seems to show a screen saying all is well and then plop, it jumps to the error screen.

Nobody seems to care. How sad.

Anyway, have a good weekend and maybe somebody will care next week,

Sandra

I have been having the exact same problems with QuickBooks self-employed over the last few days. About half my transactions come via PayPal so it's a real problem.

Since this bug in QuickBooks has come right at the end of the tax year, I'll be tempted to just switch to another bookkeeping system for 2024-2025 if it's not resolved ASAP.

I recognize the need to resolve this issue promptly, Rachael. I can share some steps to connect with Paypal.

I checked for any reported issues on our end specific to QuickBooks Self-Employed but found none. If you've already tried using different browsers and private windows, and the issue persists, I highly recommend contacting our Support Team. This way, they can take a closer look at why you can't connect your PayPal account to QuickBooks. They'll also raise a ticket to our engineering team if needed.

Here's how:

1. Go to this link: Contact Support. 
2. From the Which product is your question about? dropdown menu, select QBSE. 
3. Enter your concern and click Continue.
4. Select a way to connect.

In the meantime, we can manually upload your transactions from your internet banking website into a CSV file. 

Here's how:

Moreover, I'll be adding the following articles to help manage your transactions and create custom categories in QBSE: 

• Overview of QuickBooks Self-Employed
• Custom categories in QuickBooks Self-Employed.

Let me know if you have any other concerns or require further assistance managing your PayPal transactions. I'll be right here to keep helping. Have a good one!

Thanks, I have got it working now using the desktop version.

The problem seems to be that PayPal two-factor authentication was failing when the login request was coming via QuickBooks. To resolve it, I had to log in to PayPal on desktop in another tab using 2fa BEFORE trying to renew the connection from QuickBooks.

On Android, logging in to PayPal in Chrome before starting the process in the QuickBooks app did not help - perhaps because on mobile PayPal always requires 2fa for QuickBooks even if you are logged in in your browser.

Hello, I’m still having this issue. I can’t turn off the 2 step authentication on PayPal so even if I’m already logged in to PayPal, quickbooks opens another page to connect to PayPal requiring the 2 step authentication. Can you please provide a solution, I pay for this service so think an easy solution should have been provided to customers long before now. Many thanks

I'll hear you out, @Fieldipops. 

QuickBooks relies on the security policies set by your PayPal account, and I recognize that connecting your PayPal to QBO can be challenging because of the security measures involved. I'm here to share some insights about this and route you to the support group that can help best.  

When connecting your account to QuickBooks Online (QBO), the software will require a security protocol depending on the policies set by your financial institution to protect your account. Since you're still required for the two-step authentication process even after accessing your PayPal account, I'd recommend contacting PayPal support.

For future reference, you can check out this article to learn more about the list of banks that support open banking connections with QBO: Banks that support Open Banking connections with QuickBooks Online. 

We'll be here in the Community if you have further updates about connecting your PayPal account to QBO. We'll do our best to assist. Take care. 

@AlverMarkT Hello, your response, like all the others above from Quickbooks, doesn't solve the issue. The answer can't be "stop using PayPal and start using another bank instead". Nor can the answer be "manually upload all the transactions". It's already been established multiple times in the threads above that the issue is with Quickbooks not PayPal. It also seems apparent that Quickbooks doesn't care.

Thank you Rachael39!

I logged into PayPal from my browser and then, after 5 unsuccessful attempts, all of a sudden, I was connected. My only guess, why the 6th attempt worked: I verified on the QB side IMMEDIATELY after I had verified in the other browser tab directly logging into PayPal. 

I am glad the ordeal is over, but still do not appreciate Quickbook's handling of this.

@WU_Sandra It's just worked for me too after repeating the same process around 25 times. I didn't change anything that I did, Quickbooks just decided to work. Thank goodness this debacle is over

I’m happy it’s worked for you. 
Still  no joy for me though, it won’t even attempt to join, after clicking the authentication button I just get a message saying “we can’t connect to PayPal right now”

I’m going to have to move to another service as this is taking too long.