Introduction

If you’re using the Dokan multi-vendor marketplace plugin in your WordPress shop to support multiple vendors, then you must be frustrated to find that there is no way to send payments directly to vendors with PayPal.

Yes, Dokan is built on the older and now deprecated PayPal Adaptive Payments API, which doesn’t support new PayPal accounts anymore and has been kept alive only for existing users until they shift to the more modern APIs.

But wait, all is not lost yet! Our PayPal for WooCommerce plugin with its PayPal for WooCommerce Multi-Account Management add-on can be used to send PayPal payments directly to multiple accounts.

We’ve worked closely with the team at Dokan to roll out a new feature to our PayPal for WooCommerce Multi-Account Management add-on that brings full support to Dokan!

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to use this new feature to integrate PayPal payments to have the order payments sent directly to the vendors’ PayPal accounts.

How Will It Work?

Once we’ve configured all the required plugins, we should have a system where:

  1. Whenever a new vendor signs up to your website, their PayPal account will automatically be added to the system, ready to receive payments to orders for their products.
  2. As a site owner, you can set a global or vendor-specific commission that will be sent to your PayPal account for each order.
  3. An order may include multiple items from different vendors, in which case the vendor payments will be split based on the individual item’s price. Order commissions will be paid out accordingly as well.
  4. The site owner never touches the money. The payments are sent directly from the buyer’s PayPal account to the vendor.

1. Install and Set up PayPal for WooCommerce Plugin

PayPal for WooCommerce

After installing and setting up PayPal for WooCommerce plugin, you will have a primary PayPal account configured in your WooCommerce shop that can receive commissions on orders!

2. Install PayPal for WooCommerce Multi-Account Management Add-On

PayPal for WooCommerce Multi-Account Management Add-On

Please download the plugin and install it. After that, you’re ready to move to the next step.

3. Enable Automatic Rule Creation for Dokan

  • Make sure you’ve installed and set-up Dokan before trying out this step. Otherwise, the Dokan specific integrations in PayPal for WooCommerce Multi-Account Management plugin will not be available.
  • Next, we’ll go ahead and enable Automatic Rule Creation” in the settings page of the PayPal for WooCommerce Multi-Account Management plugin.
  • You can also enable the “PayPal Sandbox for Automatic Rule Creation” option if you want to test out your setup in a PayPal sandbox environment.
Enable Automatic Rule Creation for Dokan

4. Add Global Site Owner Commission Percentage (Optional)

  • If you, as a site owner, wish to receive a certain percentage of the total amount on every order as commission, then you can set up a Global Site Owner Commission with the PayPal for WooCommerce Multi-Account Management add-on.
  • The commission is sent to the primary account configured with the PayPal for WooCommerce plugin.
  • You can set the commission percentage in “WP Dashboard > WooCommerce > Settings > PayPal Multi-Account Setup > Settings”
Add Global Site Owner Commission

That’s it! After these steps, any new vendors signing up will have their PayPal account automatically added to the secondary accounts list in PayPal for WooCommerce Multi-Account Management add-on.

Let’s See Our Setup in Action

Let’s take a complete example and see our set up in action!

Primary Account

  • I have configured a primary account in the Express Checkout page of the PayPal for WooCommerce plugin, and this account will receive a commission from orders.
Primary Account

A New Vendor Signs Up

A New Vendor Signs Up
  • You can see that a new secondary account has been created in the accounts listing page at “WP Dashboard > WooCommerce > Settings > PayPal Multi-Account Setup.”
  • You can also notice that an author-specific trigger condition is set for this account. So the payments for this account will be sent out whenever an order comes through for this particular vendor’s product.
A New Vendor Secondary Account Is Created
  • I’ve gone ahead and signed up a few vendors with sandboxed PayPal accounts. I have also added a few products for each vendor.
Multiple Vendor Accounts
Multiple Vendor Products

Global Site Owner Commission

  • I have also set up a Global Site Owner Commission of 5% with PayPal for WooCommerce Multi-Account Management add-on.
  • Note that you also have an option to set a different commission percentage for each vendor. Check out our setup guide for information on how to do that.
Example-Global Site Owner Comission

An Order Is Placed for Account Two’s (2) Polo Shirt

  • The total price on the order is $40 + $2.31 (Shipping)
  • The commission that should be sent to Account One (primary account) is 5% of $40, which is $2.
  • The final amount sent to Account Two is  ( $40 – 5%) + 2.31 = $40.31
  • Note that apart from the commission, the vendor’s money is never touched by the site owner’s PayPal account, thus preventing issues from conflicts and chargebacks.
An Order Is Placed for Account Two's (2) Polo Shirt

An Order Comes in For Products from All Vendors

  • The Order includes (Total $102):
    • 1 product from Account Two ( Total $40, after commission deduction, $38)
    • 1 product from Account Three ( Total $20, after commission deduction, $19)
    • 1 product from Account Four ( Total $42, after commission deduction, $39.9)
  • The total commission to be sent to Account One is $5.1
An Order Comes in For Products from All Vendors

Conclusion

We saw how our solution elegantly handles PayPal payments for Dokan vendors.

Our payment solution for Dokan is low maintenance, set it up once and forget about it!

We’ve also taken care of essential things such as security and clubbing payments from multiple orders into just one PayPal transaction, resulting in the lowest fee possible for you and all the vendors.

Looking for Live Help?

Schedule a live meeting with Drew Angell, PayPal Certified Developer, and get all of your questions or concerns answered.