PayPal Standard is taking its final bow

PayPal is retiring PayPal Standard. With PayPal Payments 4.1.0, PayPal Standard is automatically disabled and hidden once you connect a PayPal account to the modern integration. If your store still uses PayPal Standard today, nothing breaks, but now is the time to plan your move.

This has been a long time coming

If this feels familiar, it is. We have been guiding merchants off PayPal Standard for years.

Back in 2021, we advised that PayPal Standard would be hidden on new installs. From WooCommerce 5.5, the gateway bundled in core stopped loading by default for new stores, with a filter available to opt back in. That filter and the bundled gateway were removed entirely in WooCommerce 8.9 (May 2024). Since then, PayPal Standard has only survived through legacy configuration or workaround plugins. PayPal Payments 4.1.0 is the next step to upgrade you safely.

What 4.1.0 actually does

The behavior is deliberately gentle:

• Updating to 4.1.0 changes nothing on its own. If you are still running PayPal Standard alongside PayPal Payments, the update alone leaves it unchanged.
• Connecting a PayPal account to PayPal Payments is the trigger. When you successfully connect a merchant account, PayPal Standard is disabled and hidden from your checkout, so customers land only on the modern integration.
• Active subscriptions are protected. If your store has active or pending-cancel subscriptions still running on PayPal Standard, the plugin detects them and leaves PayPal Standard in place rather than disabling it. Your subscribers keep getting billed. You then receive a notice indicating how many subscriptions are affected and where to find them.

In short: you stay in control. The change only happens when you choose to connect, and never at the cost of breaking live subscription renewals.

Upgrade with confidence

If touching a store that has run the same setup for years makes you nervous, that is exactly what the Upgrade Readiness Tool is for.

It runs from inside your WordPress admin and is read-only. It changes nothing on your site. It simply reads your current setup and tells you where you stand: which PayPal integration you are on, whether your versions are current, any known conflicts, and whether you have subscriptions that need extra care. You find out exactly how smooth your upgrade will be before you change a single thing.

If anything needs preparation, the tool hands your details straight to support so you do not have to dig for technical information. And if you would rather not handle the upgrade yourself, you can ask the team to guide you or do it with you at any step.

You can make this upgrade. If you hit a wall, reach out to support and a real person will help you to a working checkout.

Why this is good news

The modern PayPal Payments integration is built for how people shop today. Connected merchants get PayPal’s latest conversion features, including Pay Later, Venmo, and card fields, from a single plugin that is actively maintained in sync with PayPal’s APIs and WooCommerce releases. PayPal Standard has had no path forward in core since 8.9. Moving off it means a checkout that keeps improving on its own.

What you should do if you still rely on PayPal Standard

1. Run the Upgrade Readiness Tool to see where your store stands.
2. Install and connect PayPal Payments for WooCommerce.
3. If you sell subscriptions, or if anything looks unfamiliar, let support help.

Once you connect, the move off PayPal Standard is handled safely for you.