Missing “Prompt to Complete Registration” Email

[dhruv_1256]

Hello Simple Membership Support Team,

I’m experiencing an issue with the “Prompt to Complete Registration” email flow when using the new PayPal API for subscriptions.

When the user logs into PayPal and completes the payment:
The “Prompt to Complete Registration” email is successfully sent.

The email includes a unique registration link with the email address pre-filled in the form.

When the user pays via credit/debit card as a guest, with “Save info & create PayPal account” disabled:
The payment is successful.

However:

No registration email is received.

The email is not pre-filled in the registration form.

Please let me know how best to resolve this or if there’s a recommended workaround.

[The Assurer]

This seems to be a country specific issue. Please read this thread…
https://simple-membership-plugin.com/forums/topic/paypal-guest-payment-email-not-transfering/

[dhruv_1256]

Hi,

Thanks for your response and for suggesting it may be a country-specific issue.

To test this further, I followed your advice:

• I tried the payment process using a VPN with a different country IP.
• I also installed and tested the latest plugin package you provided in the reference thread.

Unfortunately, even after doing both, the issue still persists:

• The guest checkout via PayPal completes the payment successfully.
• But the “Prompt to Complete Registration” email is still not sent.

So it seems the issue is not related to my country or IP location.

Please let me know if there’s anything else I can try or if a patch might be needed to handle guest email capture properly.

Thank you for your continued support!

Best regards,
Dhruv Solanki

[The Assurer]

I do not believe using a VPN will get around the issue. I think “country specific” applies to your PayPal account. For the record, where is the site, and the PayPal account based?

[admin]

We have released a new version of the plugin that should solve this. Please upgrade to the new version when you can.

[dhruv_1256]

Thank you for the update.

I have updated the plugin to the latest version as suggested and tested the flow again.
However, the issue still persists — the “Prompt to Complete Registration” email is not being sent after PayPal guest checkout, and the recipient email address is still missing in the logs.
Please let me know if there are any additional steps I should try or if further debugging is needed on my end.

Best regards,
Dhruv Solanki

[The Assurer]

Please turn on the debug logs and try again. A message about the status of sent emails should appear in the logs.

[admin]

Enable the debug logging option (if it was enabled already, reset it so there is a clean capture).
https://simple-membership-plugin.com/enable-debug-logging/

Read the following page fully before doing payment testing:
https://simple-membership-plugin.com/payment-testing-checklist-for-simple-membership/

Do a test transaction and share the log file’s content from that transaction.

[dhruv_1256]

Here is a log file’s content

[2025/07/02 05:10:35] – SUCCESS: swpm_pp_create_subscription ajax request received for createSubscription. Button ID: 2440, On Page Button ID: swpm_paypal_button_0
[2025/07/02 05:10:37] – SUCCESS: PayPal Subscription ID: I-6WVWPJGJSNVP
[2025/07/02 05:12:23] – SUCCESS: OnApprove ajax request received for createSubscription. On Page Button ID: swpm_paypal_button_0
[2025/07/02 05:12:23] – SUCCESS: Subscriber Email or Name not set in the onApprove data. Going to query the PayPal API for subscription details. Subscription ID: I-6WVWPJGJSNVP
[2025/07/02 05:12:24] – SUCCESS:
Array
(
[payer_id] => G6JQPRSPEEVYG
[name] => Array
(
[given_name] => John
[surname] => Doe
)

[tenant] => PAYPAL
[shipping_address] => Array
(
[address] => Array
(
[address_line_1] => 1, main st
[admin_area_2] => San Jose
[admin_area_1] => CA
[postal_code] => 95131
[country_code] => US
)

)

)
[2025/07/02 05:12:24] – SUCCESS: Subscriber Email: , First Name: John, Last Name: Doe
[2025/07/02 05:12:25] – SUCCESS: Subscription tenure type: REGULAR, Sequence: 1, Cycles Completed: 1
[2025/07/02 05:12:25] – SUCCESS: Validation passed. Going to create/update member account and save transaction data.
[2025/07/02 05:12:25] – SUCCESS: Transaction type: pp_subscription_new, Transaction ID: 75F77888FS190010U
[2025/07/02 05:12:25] – SUCCESS: Membership payment paid for membership level ID: 4
[2025/07/02 05:12:25] – SUCCESS: swpm_handle_subsc_signup_stand_alone(). Custom value: subsc_ref=4&user_ip=::1&reference=75F77888FS190010U, Unique reference: 75F77888FS190010U
[2025/07/02 05:12:25] – SUCCESS: Could not find any record using the given email address (). Attempting to query database using the unique reference: 75F77888FS190010U
[2025/07/02 05:12:25] – SUCCESS: Did not find a match for an existing member profile for the given reference. This must be a new payment from a new member.
[2025/07/02 05:12:25] – SUCCESS: Creating new member account. Membership level ID: 4, Subscriber ID value: I-6WVWPJGJSNVP
[2025/07/02 05:12:25] – SUCCESS: Member signup URL: http://localhost/hustlehub/membership-join/membership-registration/?member_id=72&code=74bca6419740ea0f4b69226ce55b07ff
[2025/07/02 05:12:26] – SUCCESS: Member signup (prompt to complete registration) email successfully sent to:
[2025/07/02 05:12:26] – SUCCESS: Saving transaction data to the database table.
[2025/07/02 05:12:26] – SUCCESS: Transaction data saved.
[2025/07/02 05:12:31] – SUCCESS: Payment Notification Forwarding is Enabled. Posting the payment data to URL: http://localhost/hustlehub/thank-you/

[admin]

It looks like you ran the test in Sandbox mode, which unfortunately won’t work for this particular scenario. In sandbox, PayPal does not provide the payer’s email address, so you’ll need to perform a live transaction to properly test the guest checkout option.

The plugin now makes a server-side request to retrieve the email from the PayPal subscription details. If the email is still not available after a live transaction, it likely means PayPal is not providing it due to privacy restrictions in that specific country.

To handle this, you can choose one of the following options:

#1) Require account creation before payment:
This avoids the issue altogether since the user creates an account first:
https://simple-membership-plugin.com/allowing-members-create-account-prior-completing-membership-payment/

#2) Use the ‘Thank You’ page registration method
This method lets users complete their registration without relying on an email:
https://simple-membership-plugin.com/paid-registration-from-the-thank-you-page/

#3) Use Stripe instead of PayPal
Stripe supports guest checkout and does not have this email limitation:
https://simple-membership-plugin.com/sca-compliant-stripe-subscription-button/

[Author]

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