Integrating PayPal and Google Forms

As I told a co-worker 20+ years ago, there is no better way to learn how to do something than having a problem to solve.  I need to solve a problem.  My WordPress Google Form plugin originally came from a project to help our Middle School Athletics Booster Club.  It solved the problem at hand but over time I’ve added more features to it, not because the Booster Club needed them but because people asked or they were interesting problems I was compelled to solve.

Our Booster Club now wants to have an Online Shop and after playing with a couple of eCommerce plugins, I’ve decided to go with WooCommerce.  The only thing really missing is the ability to sell a Booster Club Membership.  Our membership process isn’t easily handled by any of the eCommerce plugins I’ve looked at.  WooCommerce has a paid for add-on module that looks promising but I am reluctant to buy something without trying it first.

I’d really like to inject a PayPal “pay” button into WordPress Google Form and simply use it for our membership registration but doing so isn’t simple.  PayPal makes the Payment API look very simple in their documentation but from what I’ve read, it isn’t quite so simple.

With as much mucking around with the DOM I’ve done to Google Forms usiing jQuery I don’t think it would be too hard to insert a PayPal button in place of the Submit.  Handling all of the handshaking isn’t quite as simple though.  There doesn’t appear to be an easy solution but that is what makes for a good problem.  I’ll keep noodling on it, there has to be something I can.

13 thoughts on “Integrating PayPal and Google Forms

  1. I’m trying to do something similar by passing the payment amount to an online payment service such as Dwolla or Inspire Pay. However, I can’t figure out how to get the submitted amount from Google Form. Perhaps, you can code a way that allows you to define the field (Column name) that you want to capture the data for the last submitted entry. The field could be defined in the short code. Once you have the variable, the variable value can then be passed to the online payment amount parameter. Thanks!

    • I haven’t done any more work in this area since I wrote that post although I have given it some thought. I could potentially log all of the form entries before they are sent to Google but it isn’t clear that would help. I am not sure that having several levels of handshaking between WordPress and Google Forms will be reliable enough nor can I think of a good way to identify the fields without having to parse the structure of the Google Spreadsheet. I’ve deferred this problem for now but suspect I will have to solve it before this summer when we’ll need it again for our school web site.

    • That is interesting.

    • Hi Angela,
      How safe is this site? We are a not for profit and would love to integrate a PayPal button in our google forms, but with all the hacks and sharing of info, worried about putting something out there to create this button. Have you used them before?

      • Not sure Angela will see this comment since she is just another person who commented here. I have no knowledge of the solution she linked to and would be hesitant to provide my PayPal details to a non-PayPal site. The only solution I came up with a couple years ago was to add a PayPal button on a confirmation page and I can’t think of anything better now.

  2. Mike, did you figure out any way to integrate Google Forms with PayPal easily & effectively? I’m hoping to do this for the NGO I work for that is running a Community Shared Agriculture (people pay a lump sum to get a bin of veggies each week) Our goal is to accept payment online with a form – and also to have an easy spreadsheet that tracks what everyone has selected for purchase.

    In looking at how to integrate GForms with PayPal, we’re also uncomfortable with having a couple of in-between steps (e.g. the best one I found was “Zapier” – http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/integrate-gravity-forms-well-everything-using-zapier/ ). But I don’t see any other work around if I want to use my website forms to both accept payment, and keep an up-to-date spreadsheet of all that is happening. Any updates or thoughts?

    • I never did figure out a way to connect PayPal and Google Forms. The best suggestion I can make is to put the PayPal information / form on a custom confirmation page such that after submitting the Google Form you land on a confirmation page which initiates the PayPal process.

  3. *Sorry I should clarify the above about “Zapier”. I couldn’t figure out how to integrate Google Forms directly with Paypal. But we already are set up with Gravity Forms & Paypal connected.

    My thinking there, then, is to use Gravity Forms – but have it submit the entries into a Google Spreadsheet using the Zapier integration.

    (This is what I mean by being uncomfortable with having too many steps / communication between different programs)

  4. Hey folks, I recently built a tool to do exactly this. I call it FormPal, and It’s available as a G-suite addon from https://paybyform.com.

    FormPal will generate a PayPal express checkout link for you based on your email address and the amount you want to charge. Then it gives users who have paid a receipt code, and uses a bit of trickery to validate that receipt code so people can’t submit the form without pasting in a valid one.

    Unfortunately there isn’t a way to make a PayPal button appear in the actual Google from so I had to settle for a link. But I’m pretty proud of how the whole thing came together. If you’re looking for a solution maybe it’ll be helpful to you. If you’ve got to build your own thing I’m happy to share some tips.

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