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PayPal lets you charge employers for job posts in countries where Stripe is not available. Kardow sends the poster to your PayPal.me link with the plan price pre-filled, the money lands in your PayPal account, and you approve the job once you see the payment.
If Stripe is available in your country, use Stripe instead. Stripe confirms payments automatically and publishes the job without you doing anything. PayPal is the fallback, and it always needs a manual check.

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Prerequisites

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How PayPal payments work on Kardow

Before you set anything up, it helps to know exactly what happens, because PayPal behaves differently from Stripe:
  1. An employer fills in the post-a-job form and picks one of your PayPal plans.
  2. Kardow creates the job with the status Pending and records a pending payment in your Payments tab.
  3. The employer is sent to paypal.me/your-username/49 with the price already filled in and pays you directly.
  4. PayPal.me has no return link and no webhook, so nothing is sent back to Kardow. The payment stays “pending” in the dashboard.
  5. You check your PayPal account, confirm the money arrived, then set the job to Active in Kardow.
PayPal jobs are always created as Pending, even if you have auto-publish turned on. Nothing goes live until you approve it. This is intentional: the money arrives in PayPal, not in Kardow, so only you can confirm it.

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1. Create a PayPal account

Skip to step 2 if you already have one.

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1.1 Go to the PayPal website

Visit www.paypal.com and click Sign Up.

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1.2 Choose your account type

PayPal asks you to pick between a Personal Account (everyday use) and a Business Account. Choose Business Account and click Next.
A Business account is recommended for a job board: it can receive commercial payments, shows your business name to the payer instead of your personal name, and gives you proper transaction reporting.

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1.3 Fill in your business information

Add your business name (or your own name if you are a sole trader), business phone number and business address, then click Agree and Continue.

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1.4 Confirm your email

PayPal emails you a confirmation code. Open the message and enter the code (or click Confirm Email).

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1.5 Activate your account

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1.6 Describe your business

Pick the option that best matches what you do. A job board usually fits under services or advertising.

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1.7 Fill in your personal details

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1.8 Fill in your business details

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1.9 Your account is ready

Kardow sends employers to a PayPal.me link, so you need one before payments can work. A PayPal account on its own is not enough.

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2.1 Open the PayPal.me settings

In your PayPal dashboard, go to Pay and get paid, then PayPal.me.

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2.2 Create your profile

Click Create your PayPal.me link and choose a username. This becomes the last part of your link: paypal.me/your-username.
Use your job board’s name as the username. Employers see it on the payment page, so paypal.me/acmejobs looks a lot more trustworthy than paypal.me/john1987.

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2.3 Add your photo and name

Fill in the profile details. This is what employers see when they land on your payment page. Write down your username. You need it in the next step.

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3. Connect PayPal in Kardow

1

Open the Payments page

In your dashboard, go to Payments, then open the Payment Providers tab.
2

Enable PayPal

Find the PayPal card and click Enable.
3

Enter your PayPal.me username

Type the username you created in step 2, for example acmejobs.
Enter the username only. Do not enter your email address and do not paste the full https://www.paypal.me/... URL. If you enter an email address, Kardow falls back to the part before the @, which is almost never a valid PayPal.me username, and your payment links will lead to a dead page.
4

Leave Sandbox Mode off

Sandbox Mode is for testing only. See Testing your setup below.
5

Save

Click Connect PayPal. The card now shows PayPal as connected, and a “PayPal Payment Plans” section appears on the Pricing Plans tab.
You can change the username or disconnect PayPal at any time from the same tab, or from the PayPal banner on the Pricing Plans tab. Open https://www.paypal.me/your-username/1 in a browser. You should see your PayPal.me profile with 1 pre-filled. If you get a “page not found”, the username is wrong. Fix it in the dashboard before you publish any plans.

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4. Create your PayPal pricing plans

Employers can only pay with PayPal if you offer a plan attached to it.
1

Add a plan

Go to Payments → Pricing Plans and click Add Plan, then choose PayPal.
2

Pick the plan type

PayPal supports two types:
  • One-time - the employer pays for a single job post.
  • Bundle - the employer pays once for a pack of job posts (for example, 10 posts).
3

Fill in the details

4

Create the plan

The plan is created active and visible, so it appears on your post-a-job page straight away. Use Hide or Deactivate on the plan card if you are not ready to sell it yet.

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A note on currencies

Kardow builds the link as paypal.me/username/AMOUNT for USD and paypal.me/username/AMOUNTCURRENCY for everything else, for example paypal.me/acmejobs/49EUR. Make sure your PayPal account accepts the currency you price the plan in, otherwise PayPal will show the payer an error.

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5. Confirm payments and publish jobs

This is the part you have to do by hand for every PayPal order.
1

Spot the new order

A new PayPal job shows up under Payments with the method “paypal” and the job status Pending. The job is not visible on your board yet.
2

Check PayPal

Open your PayPal activity and confirm you received the payment, and that the amount matches the plan price.
PayPal.me lets the payer change the pre-filled amount before they confirm. Always check the amount received, not just that a payment arrived.
3

Publish the job

In the Payments tab, use the status dropdown on that row and set the job to Active. You can also do it from Jobs in the dashboard.If no payment ever arrives, leave the job as Pending or set it to Draft. It never becomes public on its own.

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Bundles are credited immediately

When an employer buys a bundle, Kardow activates their credits at the moment they submit the form, before you have seen the money. That keeps the buying experience smooth, but it means an employer could post their remaining bundle jobs without paying. Every job still lands as Pending and waits for your approval, so nothing goes live unchecked. Just remember to confirm the bundle payment arrived before you start approving that employer’s jobs.

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Testing your setup

Sandbox Mode (on the PayPal card in Payment Providers) skips PayPal entirely and marks the payment as completed so you can walk through the flow without paying anything.
Sandbox Mode is not a PayPal sandbox account. It bypasses payment completely, so anyone posting a job while it is on gets a free listing. Turn it off before you go live.
For a real end-to-end test, keep Sandbox Mode off, create a $1 plan, hide it from your public page, and post a test job through it yourself.

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Limitations

PayPal plans cover job posting only. Paywall subscriptions and Talent Directory access need Stripe, Polar or invoicing.

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Troubleshooting

The username is wrong. Go to Payments → Payment Providers → PayPal → Configure and enter the username exactly as it appears in your PayPal.me profile, without the paypal.me/ prefix and without your email address.
Check three things: PayPal is connected in Payment Providers, you have at least one PayPal plan under Pricing Plans, and that plan is both Active and Visible on its plan card.
This is expected. PayPal.me cannot tell Kardow that a payment happened, so the record stays pending. Confirm the payment in PayPal and set the job to Active yourself.
PayPal.me allows the payer to edit the pre-filled amount. Ask them to send the difference, refund them from PayPal, or approve the job anyway. Kardow does not enforce the amount.
Use Stripe or Polar. PayPal on Kardow is a one-time payment fallback and cannot do recurring billing or automatic confirmation.

Posting jobs

What employers see on the post-a-job form

Invoice payments

Bill employers instead of taking card payments