Discogs is making payments simpler with the PayPal payments solution. You can find more details about how the updated payments solution works and how it benefits you on the blog.
This FAQ will be regularly updated as new questions come up.
Onboarding
How do I onboard to the PayPal payments solution?
If I already accept PayPal on Discogs, do I need to do anything?
How do I set my currency for selling on Discogs?
Payment Options
What payment methods are available with the PayPal payments solution?
What if a buyer doesn’t have a PayPal account?
Invoices & Order Status
Will Discogs selling fee invoices change with the PayPal payments solution?
How can I keep track of my Discogs orders without being able to reference invoices?
How will order statuses change after I onboard the PayPal payments solution?
What should a seller do if an order is in the Invoice Sent status?
Can I merge orders after they’ve been paid for?
Selling Fee
How will the PayPal payments solution affect Discogs selling fee?
What is the "Partner Commission" / “Partner Fee” charge I see on my PayPal payment receipt?
Refunds
What happens when a refund is issued?
Why is my refunded amount different from the original transaction value?
Seller Settings
As a Seller, what happens to my Billing Page?
What protection does PayPal offer sellers?
Onboarding
How do I onboard the PayPal payments solution?
Once you click the Connect to PayPal button in your Seller Settings, you will be prompted to log in to your PayPal account.
Once you login and connect your account, you provide Discogs permission to deduct the selling fee and taxes at the time of payment on an order.
When connecting, you’ll see the following agreement:
I authorize Discogs to:
- Use PayPal to process my customers’ payments.
- Initiate steps to authorize and capture my customers’ payments.
- Search through and access corresponding transaction data.
- Initiate a refund for a specific transaction.
- Access my email and location information for purposes of linking with my PayPal account for integration.
Click ‘Agree and Connect’.
If I already accept PayPal on Discogs, do I need to do anything?
Yes, even if you already have your PayPal account saved in your Seller Settings on Discogs, you’ll be required to onboard the PayPal payments solution to enable immediate payments with the selling fee and taxes deducted.
All you need to do is click the ‘Connect to PayPal’ button now available in your Discogs Seller Settings to onboard in minutes. You don’t need to make any changes to your existing PayPal account.
How do I set my currency for selling on Discogs?
So long as the currency in your PayPal account matches your currency on Discogs, there is nothing you need to “set” when onboarding. If your currency on Discogs does not match your currency in PayPal, a pop-up box will appear asking which currency you wish to use on Discogs.
If you wish to remain transacting in the currency you always have, you can continue to do so without problem.
If you wish to change your listing currency on Discogs, you can do so in your Seller Settings.
Payment Options
What payment methods are available with the PayPal payments solution?
Buyers will be able to check out using PayPal, credit card, debit card, and in selected countries, local payment options will become available. Visa (or similar) gift cards are not accepted as a form of payment at this time. Buyers can make payment with or without a PayPal account.
Local bank transfer options will be available to buyers in selected countries and will be processed by PayPal. These include the following:
| Service | Country |
| Mercado Pago |
Brazil Mexico |
|
iDeal |
The Netherlands |
Processing fees for these Alternate Payment Methods can be found here.
Auxiliary payment methods not supported by PayPal, such as Bank Transfer, Cash, Check, Skrill, etc, will no longer be available in your Discogs shop after you onboard the PayPal payments solution.
Receiving a payment completed notification from Discogs is only the first step. Please always check the communication received from your payment provider. For example, e-checks can take up to 6 business days to clear and for the money to appear in the recipient’s PayPal account or to be canceled because of the buyer’s insufficient funds. Sellers should wait to have the confirmation that the e-check has been “Completed” or “Cancelled” before shipping the order. If the payment status indicates “Cancelled”, please contact our support service to have the order status reverted before your buyer can send a new payment.
What if a buyer doesn’t have a PayPal account?
Buyers will still be able to checkout on Discogs with or without a PayPal account. Additional payment methods that can be used without a PayPal account include credit or debit card, and, in select countries, localized payment methods including Mercado Pago (Brazil, Mexico) or iDeal (the Netherlands).
Invoices & Order Status
Will Discogs selling fee invoices change with the PayPal payments solution?
After onboarding to the PayPal payments solution, sellers will no longer receive monthly selling fee invoices.
Instead, when an order is paid for, Discogs selling fee and taxes (referred to by PayPal as a Partner Fee or Partner Commission) that are collected by Discogs will be automatically deducted and directed to the appropriate party, as outlined:
- Discogs selling fee will be directed to Discogs.
- Fee taxes, such as UK VAT, EU VAT, AU GST, NZ GST, and JCT will be directed to Discogs.
- Order taxes, such as US Marketplace Facilitator (MPF) sales tax, EU VAT, UK VAT, AU GST, and NZ GST will be directed to Discogs.
- Order taxes, such as Remote and Resident US sales tax will be directed to the seller.
- PayPal's processing fees are taken from the gross payment amount and directed to PayPal (this is the same as the current practice with PayPal).
When a seller refunds a buyer, the selling fee and taxes are almost immediately adjusted and returned accordingly. Keep reading below for more information.
How can I keep track of my Discogs orders without being able to reference invoices?
We recently improved the data export functionality for Marketplace Orders and Marketplace Order Items, allowing you to isolate the date range of your data exports and easily access the information you need in CSV format. Follow the instructions on the blog post linked here for more details.
How will order statuses change after I onboard the PayPal payments solution?
After a buyer makes a payment, orders will move straight to Payment Received status and you'll be notified via your Discogs inbox, email, or both depending on your notification settings. The ability to adjust the order status via the order page before payment is made will no longer be available.
It may occur that a payment is sent but is not cleared right away. In this case, PayPal marks this payment as “pending”. Typically, this is the result of an e-check. The Discogs order page will also reflect this pending payment by updating the order status to Payment Pending. When the payment clears, Discogs will automatically update the order to “Payment Received”. We recommend that pending payments clear before the seller ships the order.
After the payment has been received, you can also update the order using the optional status “In Progress”. This will allow you to notify the buyer that you are preparing the order. To read more about this status, please visit What Do The Different Order Statuses Mean?
What should a seller do if an order is in the Invoice Sent status?
All orders using the PayPal payments solution should arrive as Payment Received, as the buyer sends payment as part of their checkout process. If the order page does not automatically update to Payment Received, it means that the buyer did not complete the checkout process properly and payment was not sent.
The buyer can still send payment via the order page using the green Checkout Now button (only the buyer can see this button). A buyer can also arrive on the payment page by adding /payment to the end of the order page URL. If neither of these steps work, the seller should cancel the order as Per Buyer’s Request and ask the buyer to create the order a second time.
Do not send payment directly off Discogs. Doing so is considered fee avoidance for the seller, as Discogs does not collect the sales fee and the necessary taxes associated with the order. When in doubt, contact our Community Support team for further assistance.
Can I merge orders after they’ve been paid for?
No. As with our previous legacy system, only orders that have not been paid for can be merged with the PayPal payments solution. For more information, please review our separate help document: How Can I Merge Multiple Orders Together?
Selling Fee
How will the PayPal payments solution affect Discogs selling fee?
Discogs charges an 9% selling fee for items sold charged on both the item price and the shipping costs. Selling fee will be stated in the seller's listing currency.
Minimum and maximum selling fee will be defined for each currency. We are aiming to keep these as close as possible to the USD amounts (minimum being USD $0.10, maximum $150). The new minimum and maximum selling fees are:
|
Name |
Abbreviation |
Minimum fee |
Maximum fee |
|
Australian Dollars |
AUD |
AUD $0.15 |
AUD $200.00 |
|
Brazilian Real |
BRL |
R$0.50 |
R$800.00 |
|
Canadian Dollars |
CAD |
CAD $0.15 |
CAD $200.00 |
|
Danish kroner |
DKK |
kr. 0.65 |
kr. 1000 |
|
Swiss Francs |
CHF |
CHF 0.10 |
CHF 150.00 |
|
Euro |
EUR |
€0.10 |
€150.00 |
|
UK Pounds |
GBP |
£0.10 |
£150.00 |
|
Japanese Yen |
JPY |
¥10 |
¥15000 |
|
Mexican Pesos |
MXN |
MXN $2.00 |
MXN $3000.00 |
|
New Zealand Dollars |
NZD |
NZD $0.15 |
NZD $200.00 |
|
Swedish kronor |
SEK |
Kr 1.00 |
Kr 1200.00 |
|
US Dollars |
USD |
$0.10 |
$150.00 |
What is the "Partner Commission" / “Partner Fee” charge I see on my PayPal payment receipt?
"Partner Fee" (or “Partner Commission” for those with a PayPal Business account) is the term used to encompass the total fees associated with your order. It includes the 9% fee for selling on Discogs, along with all applicable taxes for your order (e.g. VAT, Japan consumption tax, etc). You will see this as a line item on your PayPal payment statement, describing the total costs we have taken from your buyer's payment.
Refunds
How do I issue a refund?
You can refund your buyer using the Send Refund option under the More button on the Discogs order page. For more information about the Send Refund option, please visit How Do I Refund An Order?
Please note that in general, sellers must have enough funds in their PayPal balance to cover a refund. These funds must sufficiently cover the total order amount as well as any associated PayPal fees. That said, depending on the seller’s region PayPal will try a secondary source (for example, a credit card or bank account) if the PayPal balance is not enough to cover the refund. For clarity on how your refunds are processed, please contact PayPal.
What happens when a refund is issued?
When a refund is issued the payment will be returned to the buyer in the payment method they used for the original transaction. This includes any fees and taxes collected at time of payment, excluding the PayPal transaction fee.
Why is my refunded amount different from the original transaction value?
If you made a payment for an item that was sold in a currency different from your local currency, the payment may be converted into the seller’s currency (if that currency is supported by Discogs). When a refund is issued on that transaction, the payment will be converted back to the currency you made the payment in. If the currency conversion rates differ from the date of the original transaction, there may be a discrepancy between the amount of the original payment and the refunded amount.
When issuing a refund, do I need to calculate and remit taxes collected on the original transaction separate to the gross amount due to the buyer?
When issuing a partial refund, enter the amount you wish to return to the buyer for each item in an order. You can also send a partial refund for the cost of shipping. In the example below, the seller is refunding €4.00 for one item, which was sold to the buyer for €9.60.
The buyer will receive the €4.00 and a partial refund for the tax that they paid. The tax refund will be automatically calculated and remitted to the buyer by PayPal, returning the proportion of the Partner Commission (Discogs’ selling fee and any sales tax collected in the original transaction). Once the refund is complete, full details will be displayed on the Order/Purchase page.
Note: Sellers must have enough balance in their PayPal account to issue a refund. Previously, PayPal would withdraw enough from the seller’s funding source to cover a refund. Now, sellers will need enough balance to cover a refund.
Seller Settings
As a Seller, what happens to my Billing Page?
Although you’ll no longer receive a monthly selling fee invoice, your Billing Page and Selling Fees Invoice history will be preserved for now.
If you need to review recent selling fees, we recommend using the Order Export and selecting the desired timeframe.
What protection does PayPal offer sellers?
PayPal’s Seller Protection program “guard[s] you from losing money to claims and chargebacks”, particularly around “unauthorized transaction” and “item not received” disputes.
To be eligible for seller protection, you may need to provide information like proof of shipment, or postal tracking. You can find out more about PayPal’s Seller Protection here.
Will this resolve the PayPal : Discogs address discrepancy issue that some buyers and sellers have had in the past?
For the most part, yes. Upon completing payment, the buyer selects which address they want the item sent to. This address is then passed to PayPal and is the address associated with the transaction.
Most importantly, the seller is eligible for Seller Protection so long as they send the item to whichever address is displayed on PayPal’s Transaction Details page. For more information, please review PayPal’s seller protection policies.