Recurring invoice/payments work in both PayPal & Stripe, but I understand that they are payment gateways. Is there something within the financial services card regulations/securities that prevents QBO from allowing recurring card payments to be set up and controlled directly from this software? - Are we wasting our time asking for this?

It's not automatic card payments that is the issue here, it's the ability to automatically specify that a recurring invoice can be paid by Paypal. Presently, for all recurring invoices not collected by direct debit, I have to go in every month (thankfully my recurring invoices are only monthly and there aren't many) and tick the box to say they can be paid by Paypal - it's tedious - especially as it's just a tickbox. It's even more annoying that, as far as I remember, the option used to be available!

We're not asking for a major upgrade. We just need a tickbox that is already on the create invoice page putting on the recurring invoice template page as well.

Hello sonnet-accountants, thanks for posting on this thread, we fully appreciate what you are saying and have re-laid this all back to the development team also if you put it as feedback within the feedback option in your account too. So yes paypal doesn’t have an option for recurring invoice payment options. Only gocardless have this option currently.