PayPal error “We’re sorry, things don’t appear to be working at the moment.”

[Steve]

Hello,
I have two styles of PayPal payment buttons active on my site.
One is a subscription, another is a Smart Checkout button.
The issue I am having is, when one wants to subscribe, without creating a PayPal account, i.e. a guest, they choose the ‘Pay with a Credit/Debit card’ option.
After filling in the required information and clicking submit, PayPal returns the error message that is the subject of this post.
The Smart Checkout button, which provides the same choices, without the auto-renewing subscription, works fine.
Not sure if this is related, but I found this article on the PayPal support site that seems to indicate they have made a change that may require a subsequent change to the payment software. https://www.paypal.com/us/cshelp/article/ts2067
Thank you.

[The Assurer]

Do you have a PayPal Business account? PayPal requires subscribers to have a PayPal account for automatic recurring payments. However, PayPal does allow businesses to set up subscription payments; regardless of whether the subscriber has a PayPal account.

[Steve]

It makes sense that PayPal would require a PayPal account to enable it to manage a reoccurring payment scenario, then the question would be, since I am using the Simple Membership Plugin to create the button, wouldn’t the option to use a credit/debit card as a guest, be something controlled when the subscription button is created in Payments?
As far as the being able to offer a subscription under a business account, we have a business account and aren’t experiencing any restrictions with our subscriptions other than the aforementioned issue with trying to purchase as a guest.

[The Assurer]

When a recurring payment plan is purchased; PayPal must be able to create a “payment contract.” If the purchaser is not using a PayPal account; there is no place to “link” the payment contract to.

[Author]

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