Forms: Offer your online donors the best of both worlds by using Stripe and PayPal

In this article:

• Introduction
• Why is this our recommended approach?
• What does each of the checkout experiences look like?
• Step-by-step setup instructions

Introduction

To offer your online donors the maximum number of payment options in your LGL forms, we recommend doing the following:

• Integrate your LGL Forms account with both a Stripe account and a PayPal account
• When creating payment forms, select Stripe as your primary processor
• Check the box indicating you also want to offer the PayPal option

Why is this our recommended approach?

When you use the combination of Stripe and PayPal in an LGL form, you can offer all of the checkout options available in LGL Forms: Credit card, Google Pay, Apple Pay, ACH, PayPal, and Venmo.

Here's a summary of the checkout options for Stripe and PayPal individually as well as when you combine the two:

If your LGL Forms account is still using the previous PayPal integration (this will be the case if you set it up prior to November 2024), it will not allow recurring donations on a credit card, only via PayPal payments. So if you are not using PayPal Complete Payments, it's good to offer Stripe as well, so that your forms allow recurring donations to be made on a credit card.

Please also refer to this separate article, Upgrade from the previous PayPal integration for LGL Forms to the new one.

It's free to set up Stripe accounts and PayPal accounts, so linking your LGL Forms account to both won't cost you any extra fees.

What does each of the checkout experiences look like?

These screenshots show the checkout process for each option.

1. Checking out using the credit card option, when Stripe is your payment processor. 

2. Checking out using the previous PayPal option. 

Step-by-step setup instructions

Integrate your LGL Forms account with both a Stripe account and a PayPal account

Please refer to these articles for instructions on how to set up each integration:

• Stripe
• PayPal

When creating payment forms, select Stripe as your primary payment processor

When you're editing a payment-enabled form, if you have more than one payment processor linked to your LGL Forms account you will be able to select the one you'd like to use for that form:

Check the PayPal box to add it as an additional payment option

If your LGL Forms account is linked to a PayPal account in addition to a Stripe account, you will see an option to add PayPal as an additional payment method. You can check that box as shown here: