"unable to use PayPal to process orders from the geographic region you selected"

Someone sent me logs from an instance where this error came up:

We are sorry for the inconvenience; however, at the present time we are unable to use PayPal to process orders from the geographic region you selected as your PayPal address. Please continue using normal checkout and select from the available payment methods to complete your order.

In the past most of the research to determine its cause was geared around customer address info. But in this case something else stood out, and the following fix worked for them.

I've not had a chance to do extensive testing with all possible configurations, but I'm offering this for others to try out and share feedback:

/includes/modules/payment/paypalwpp.php
Line 1755 (as of v1.5.4)
Change this:

$order->info['total'] = urldecode($response['AMT']);

to the following, which basically just adds some conditional checks in front of the existing logic on that line:

if ($order->info['total'] < 0.01 && urldecode($response['AMT']) > 0) $order->info['total'] = urldecode($response['AMT']);

We had the same problem on a client's site and were tearing our hair out trying to figure out what was wrong, as none of our other Paypal users were reporting it...and unfortunately, this occurred after a major upgrade from 1.3.8a to 1.5.4 so you can imagine the number of red-herrings that were available!

Delighted to report that this fix above worked. Thanks.

I can also confirm this resolved this issue for a client. Tried lots of other options first, but this did it.

I have the same problem, how can I get this result? please help ASAP.

thanks

cattreestore:

I have the same problem, how can I get this result? please help ASAP.

thanks

Follow the instructions in the first post in this thread.

jeking:

Follow the instructions in the first post in this thread.

I'm just new to Zen Cart, I see that post before, but I'm having problem. I don't know where to edit this code. I'm using Zen Cart 1.3.8a.

thanks

cattreestore:

I'm just new to Zen Cart, I see that post before, but I'm having problem. I don't know where to edit this code. I'm using Zen Cart 1.3.8a.

thanks

Did you take over someone else's site or did you start a fresh and new site? That version of ZC is at least 6 years old... If you notice the title of this thread indicates version 1.5.4 and 1.5.5 is just around the corner...

If you took over an existing site, it is one thing, if you started fresh it's entirely something else... Regardless welcome to ZC. It usually is helpful to get more information so that those offering to help can provide direct suggestions rather than guesses. This information is usually what is provided in the posting tips but could be more depending on the situation. :) help everyone help you.

Thanks, I just take over the website.
I try to create a new post for this problem, but I don't even see a "New Post" button. this is the closest post to what I'm facing.

Thanks

Anyone with version 1.5.5a running into this problem?

"“We are sorry for the inconvenience; however, at the present time we are unable to use PayPal to process orders from the geographic region you selected as your PayPal address."

Checked the zone settings and the code from the sticky has been updated from 1.5.4.

Any other suggestions?

Would suggest answering the posting tips and possibly providing a way to reproduce the problem. Ie a link to the site, etc... not sure what ZC 1.5.4 has to do with a 1.5.5 installation or what is meant by what has been applied.

mc12345678:

Would suggest answering the posting tips and possibly providing a way to reproduce the problem. Ie a link to the site, etc... not sure what ZC 1.5.4 has to do with a 1.5.5 installation or what is meant by what has been applied.

The sticky addressing the problem has been fixed in 1.5.5:

https://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.php?217225-quot-unable-to-use-PayPal-to-process-orders-from-the-geographic-region-you-selected-quot

The problem is intermittent as some paypal payments go through but others have not.

I'm having this issue now on a client site that is running on 1.5.5a, php5.6, mysql 5.6. As you said some payments go through and others don't. I confirmed that the code update you referenced is installed. We currently have a ticket open with the paypal developers. I'll keep you posted on what we find. FYI the debug logs have the following:

ec-step2-finish - 1b
Cannot use address due to country lookup/match failure.

followed by:

termEC-10
Redirecting to shopping_cart - Stack: shopping_cart
Message: We are sorry for the inconvenience; however, at the present time we are unable to use PayPal to process orders from the geographic region you selected as your PayPal address.  Please continue using normal checkout and select from the available payment methods to complete your order.

I posted in another thread but thought this was a more appropriate location. I'll put a reference in the other thread to this one. I have a clients site and he's experiencing this problem intermittently. The site was just upgraded to 1.5.5a, php 5.6.27, mysql 5.6.33. I have confirmed that the paypal module has the fix described earlier. Some paypal express checkout transactions complete successfully and others fail consistently. We opened a ticket with paypal and their tech support sent this back related to one transaction.

The error message being displayed is actually on ZenCart's side. However, I was able to track down the cause.

In these ones detailing an error, ZenCart is passing the variable 'noshipping' = 1. This indicates to PayPal that you do not need back the shipping address. When the data is returned from PayPal, we do not include the customer's address, only their country. ZenCart is running a geographic check and requires at least a state (and maybe a zip code and/or street address) in order to allow the payment.

To resolve, you would either need to have ZenCart request the address by passing noshipping = 0 or 2, or disable the geographic check in ZenCart.
I've turned debugging on and we had the customer recreate the error. We'll get details on how he went through the payment process. I have debug logs to look at if you'd like to see them.

I'm not sure if this might have an impact. The products are virtual and the customer is trying to place the order from an iphone.

I saw the release of 1.5.5b and since there were updates to the paypal express checkout module I decided to try and use the new module. I uninstalled the module and reinstalled/configured. I'm getting the same error with some customers unable to checkout. I have debug logs.

I found the error. The problem only occurred with virtual products where paypal did not pass back a shipping address. What I discovered going through the code was a problem with the customers countries table. The paypal module expects the country code for the US to be 223 and for some reason the customers was 241. When the countries table was searched for a match on 223 it was not found and correctly issued the error to the customer.

I posted this in another thread but I'll share it here also for Rossi to check.
I found the error on my clients site. The problem only occurred with virtual products where paypal did not pass back a shipping address. What I discovered going through the code was a problem with the customers countries table. The paypal module expects the country code for the US to be 223 and for some reason the customers was 241. When the countries table was searched for a match on 223 it was not found and correctly issued the error to the customer.

Ya, deleting a country and adding it back again will change its ID in the database, and will break a number of components. (Should never delete country records. Only change status.)

To fix the data in the store you're working with, you'll need to change the country id in all affected places (several tables ... zones, address_book, orders, and more) to match the fixes you make in the countries table.

DrByte:

Ya, deleting a country and adding it back again will change its ID in the database, and will break a number of components. (Should never delete country records. Only change status.)

To fix the data in the store you're working with, you'll need to change the country id in all affected places (several tables ... zones, address_book, orders, and more) to match the fixes you make in the countries table.

How can I re-populate countries back to my database and know if their ID numbers are correct? I deleted most countries way back in 1.3.8. I'm now using 1.5.5 (about to upgrade to 1.5.5b).
Thank you

VDecalS:

How can I re-populate countries back to my database and know if their ID numbers are correct? I deleted most countries way back in 1.3.8. I'm now using 1.5.5 (about to upgrade to 1.5.5b).
Thank you
The countries with their id assignments are provided in the install files: zc_install/sql/install and then depending on if your site/db are in latin1 or utf8 would be in mysql_latin1.sql or mysql_utf8.sql respectively.

From there, well, could export your countries table in a format that lines up with the same as the applicable import file or after export could manipulate copies to make the data line up say in a spreadsheet or something and evaluate from there.

Just a thought anyways of an approach. May be others.