This transaction couldn't be completed Paypal error 10486

Hi Everyone.

I've got a weird issue with paypal express checkout. It's been working fine for ages, years in fact & we haven't made any code changes. As of the last 2 weeks or so, hardly any paypal express checkout payments go through. For every say 10 attempts, 1 will go through. The rest are failing with the following returned in logs

[BUILD] => 57278533
[L_ERRORCODE0] => 10486
[L_SHORTMESSAGE0] => This transaction couldn't be completed.
[L_LONGMESSAGE0] => This transaction couldn't be completed. Please redirect your customer to PayPal.
[L_SEVERITYCODE0] => Error
[CURL_ERRORS] => 

I know a 10486 used to mean that there was an issue with the user's bank, but this seems to be happening all the time now. As an example, we used to have a rough 50/50 ratio of square payments to paypal payments, now perhaps 1 in 10 payments are paypal, with the rest of the paypal attempts failing. We are having a lot of abandoned carts, so I'm thinking this is a bit more serious than all of those customers having issues with their paypal accounts or banks. Anyone else seen this?

I'm using Zen Cart 1.5.6c on php 7.3.33

Like I said, we've made no updates or code changes, and it was all working OK until around 14 days ago. I've left a screenshot of the logs folder to highlight how common it's getting.

Site is https://www.koolbadges.co.uk

You don't mention your setup but, if you check the forum, it appears that PayPal is shutting off a lot of their transactions in the UK and EU.

Folks here are working on the problem.

https://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.php?228923-Paypal-Website-Payments-Pro-Upgrade-3D-SECURE-2022&p=1389748

Thanks dbltoe, but this is for PayPal express checkout, not website payments pro. Not sure if this would still apply to express checkout as the payflow is essential still under paypals control with notifications sent via IPN.

Sorry, I missed the 1.5.6 since you didn't answer the posting tips.

There have been several PayPal changes for Express since 1.5.6.

I would suggest you upgrade as soon as possible to 1.5.7d.

I can certainly look at upgrading in the near future, but I'm still at a loss as to why this has just started happening. I've just gone through the zen cart git on GitHub to look for any significant changes to paypal express checkout files, and nothing major stands out to me. There have been minor tweaks and changes for a lot of the payments pro stuff, but express checkout looks relatively unchanged in that time, apart from a few syntax tweaks & improvements to sections of code. I can't see any major changes to express checkout since 1.5.6c.

Also, if it was at a code level, I would expect all paypal transactions to fail, but some are still succeeding.

I'm wondering if this is perhaps due to customers trying to check out with existing PayPal accounts, but who have yet t update their PayPal linked debit/credit card with the latest SCA secure challenges? I'm thinking that because I myself had my hosting payments fail this month, requiring me to log in, update my card details and pass a SCA challenge from my bank before I could continue making payments. It may be that once customers log into paypal and update their card details, this will become a non issue. The problem is that could take months before enough people have had the chance to even notice they need to action this.

I've temporarily disabled PayPal express checkout, as the interruption to payflow seems to be leading to abandoned carts. I'll stick with Square WebPay until I can get to the bottom of this & hopefully reduce the amount of abandoned carts. I've been looking for a reason to ditch PayPal for a while, this might be that reason.

johnjlarge:

I've temporarily disabled PayPal express checkout, as the interruption to payflow seems to be leading to abandoned carts. I'll stick with Square WebPay until I can get to the bottom of this & hopefully reduce the amount of abandoned carts. I've been looking for a reason to ditch PayPal for a while, this might be that reason.

Hi, did you find a fix for express? I have also had to disable it as it takes you to paypal, then confirm and go back to my site, when click continue it just goes back to Paypal again and again. My customers cannot complete transactions and the error code is 10486 which indicates lack of funds. I have tried it my self as a customer and it is not a lack of funds.