Inappropriate behavior

Hello @jberry86

Just to clarify, nothing is being force-enabled by the plugin itself. This behavior has been explained in detail by WooCommerce here: https://developer.woocommerce.com/2026/04/06/payment-gateways-have-always-been-enabled-a-debrief/

In the previous (legacy) UI, alternative payment methods (APMs) were enabled by default. They were part of the PayPal configuration, but were not exposed as separate WooCommerce payment gateways, which is why many merchants were unaware of them. They would only be effectively disabled if they were explicitly added to the “disabled APM” list. If that never happened, they remained enabled in the background.

With the new UI (v4.x), these same APMs are now split into individual WooCommerce gateways with their own settings. During this migration, WooCommerce detects them as “newly enabled gateways” and sends email notifications like: “Payment gateway ‘Przelewy24 (via PayPal)’ enabled”. So even though it looks like something new was activated, in reality:

• Nothing new was enabled by us
• The existing configuration was simply migrated
• The difference is that WooCommerce now treats them as separate gateways and triggers notifications accordingly

Previously, you wouldn’t receive any emails about this because APMs were handled internally within the PayPal integration and not as standalone gateways. So the key point is: this is a visibility and structure change, not a change in what was enabled.

The challenge here is that there isn’t really a perfect approach that satisfies everyone to avoid feedback like yours. If we had disabled all APMs by default during the update instead of migrating the existing configuration, we would likely receive reports from merchants asking why previously available payment methods suddenly stopped working. To avoid breaking existing setups, we chose to preserve the previous state and migrate the configuration as-is.

I hope this clarifies the situation and gives you a reason to reconsider your rating of our plugin.

Kind regards,
Krystian

Hi @trifco

Thank you for the thoughtful response. The frustration is understandable, and some of the technical context around this update deserves a clearer explanation than what’s been shared so far.

On the APM gateways appearing after the update

These alternative payment methods were already active and processing payments for eligible buyers on affected stores. The previous plugin architecture bundled them invisibly under the PayPal umbrella rather than exposing them as individual WooCommerce gateways. The 4.0 update changed that structure when migrating every installation to the new UI, and WooCommerce’s built-in notification system flagged them as “newly enabled” because it detected new gateway registrations. The notifications were technically accurate from WooCommerce’s perspective, but misleading from a merchant’s perspective, because nothing was actually turned on that wasn’t already running.

We preserved the existing configuration during migration because the alternative, silently disabling payment methods that merchants and their customers were actively using, would have been a stability risk. PayPal has been deprecating the old JS SDK integration that powered these methods, so moving them to proper WooCommerce gateways was not optional. It was the only way to keep them working going forward.

That said, the experience of receiving several unexpected “gateway enabled” emails with no additional context was not good enough. We had an adjacent solution for a similar case with configurations involving Standard Card payments and Apple Pay/Google Pay, but we it did not consider the APM activation scenario for this. That is something we should have anticipated and communicated better in the update itself. Fair point.

Worth noting: the new settings UI had been available for over a year starting with 3.0, and the migration was offered as an opt-in for over six months with recurring admin notices on the PayPal settings page and WooCommerce inbox items. Many merchants migrated voluntarily during that window. But for those who updated later and were automatically migrated, the lack of immediate context around the gateway emails made the change feel abrupt. We hear that.

On the checkout issues:
A greyed-out, unresponsive PayPal button after an update is a serious problem, and I don’t want to minimize that experience.

I understand why the timing made it look connected to the APM migration. However, the settings migration and the checkout-facing button rendering are handled by different parts of the plugin. The update made significant changes to the inner workings of the plugin, which means the root cause may be something else in the environment, a caching layer serving stale scripts, a theme or plugin conflict triggered by the update, or something similar where there is usually a straightforward fix.

These are the kinds of issues our support team can diagnose quickly with more insight into the specific environment details. A forum thread alone makes it difficult to troubleshoot because we can’t see what is actually happening on the site. A support ticket gives us something concrete to work with and positions us to provide actionable guidance.

On the design direction:
The move to individual WooCommerce gateways is intentional and overdue. Previously, the plugin could stack up to seven payment buttons on top of each other under the PayPal gateway entry. That created confusion for buyers and is not a recommended UX pattern in the WooCommerce ecosystem, thus the separate payment method structure has been served as a default for over two years already.

The new structure gives each payment method its own radio button, its own toggle, and its own settings, consistent with how every other WooCommerce payment gateway works. This is future-proofing for PayPal API changes and brings more control for merchants, more clarity for buyers.

If you’re still experiencing issues:
Please submit a support ticket and reference this thread. We will prioritize getting your checkout diagnosed and resolved. No database overrides or manual rollbacks should be necessary. If something in your setup is causing a conflict, we want to know about it so we can address it for others too.

If anything about your payment configuration feels off after the update, our support team is there to help.

Kind regards,
Krystian