At a glance
Total amount that successfully flowed through PayPal in the period, gross of refunds, gross of fees, gross of disputes. Money that touched the processor, not money you kept. The PayPal twin of Stripe Total Charge Volume.
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your PayPal data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US-based fashion brand running PayPal alongside Stripe. PayPal carries the higher-risk traffic (younger demographics, international guests, customers without credit cards). The 7-day window covers 06 Apr 26 to 12 Apr 26. The transactions feed returns 1,420 rows for that window:- The decline + failed bucket (92 rows, ~7.6% of T00 attempts) is meaningfully higher than a card-only Stripe store would see. PayPal carries international shoppers and bank-funded payers; both groups skew higher decline. The headline volume looks fine but the yield (success ÷ attempts) is the better north-star here. Compare against PP Success Rate.
- 22 pending payments worth ~$1,900 are sitting in
P. Most are SEPA / eCheque clearing on a 3-business-day cycle; a handful (8 rows) are risk-review holds on suspicious-looking high-value orders. They’ll either resolve to S (and start counting) or D (and never count). Don’t include them in revenue forecasts; track them via PP Pending Rate. - The 4 dispute events (T19) are NOT deducted from this card but they represent real exposure ($520). PayPal disputes include both PayPal-buyer-protection cases and bank-initiated chargebacks routed through PayPal. The dispute rate of 0.35% (4 ÷ 1,140) is healthy but worth watching, PP Dispute Rate alerts at 0.9% (90% of the Visa/Mastercard 1.0% cap).
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in PayPal Business: Closest comparable is PayPal Business → Reports → Financial summary for the same date range. The “Gross sales” line on that report maps to this card. Other useful screens:- Activity → All Transactions, the row-level view filtered to “Payments received”.
- Reports → Activity download for a CSV export to reconcile row-by-row.
- Reports → Sales transactions groups by item and excludes refunds/disputes the way this card does.
- “Net amount received” on the Financial summary already nets fees and refunds; that maps to PP Net Revenue, not this card.
- “Money in” on the Activity summary tile includes received-friend-payments and personal transfers if your account has both personal and business activity blended.
- “Settled to bank” is a payout view (T03), not a payment-received view.
Cross-connector reconciliation:
Quick rule for support tickets: if a merchant says “PayPal Business shows 80k” in the same period, walk through the divergence table in order. Page cap is the most common cause for high-volume merchants; FX is the most common for multi-currency stores; refresh lag for “today” complaints; and timezone for “yesterday” complaints.
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Reconciliation questions (“why doesn’t this match PayPal Business / my bank?”) are answered in the Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard section above. Below are the merchant questions that aren’t reconciliation.Why is my PayPal total a fraction of my Stripe total? PayPal typically carries 15-30% of combined PayPal + Stripe revenue for multi-processor merchants. Buyers default to whichever option they trust; younger US shoppers, international guests, and mobile-heavy traffic skew toward PayPal, while desktop card-on-file shoppers skew toward Stripe. The split is a strategic input for which option to feature in checkout, not a bug. Why is this higher than what arrived in my bank? Total Transaction Volume is gross of fees, refunds, and disputes. Bank deposits reflect PP Net Revenue (PayPal fees and refunds netted) minus disputes lost minus rolling reserves. Use PP Pending Balance and PP Avg Settlement Time to see what’s in flight on its way to settlement. What does “denied” actually mean for PayPal? PayPal’s
D (denied) status covers both PayPal-side denials AND bank-side issuer declines for card payments routed through PayPal. PayPal acts as a payment intermediary; from the merchant view the distinction is irrelevant (the customer didn’t pay). For finer breakdown see PP Decline Event Codes. The card excludes both equally.
Are eCheque payments counted while they’re clearing?
No. eCheque clearance puts the transaction in P (pending) for ~3-5 business days. While P it’s excluded; when it flips to S it starts contributing on the next refresh. Same for SEPA debit (~3 business days) and any payment held for risk review. Track the pending pool via PP Pending Rate.
Are disputes counted as revenue?
Yes, until and unless they’re resolved against you. A successful payment later disputed still counts in this card. PayPal’s dispute lifecycle (T19) is tracked separately on PP Dispute Value, PP Dispute Rate, and PP Buyer Protection Win Rate. PayPal aligns with Visa/Mastercard at the 1.0% chargeback monitoring threshold; we alert at 0.9%.
My multi-currency PayPal account, why does the headline number look weird?
Because we sum each transaction in its own currency without FX conversion. A store taking USD + EUR + GBP gets a sum like “$50k + €12k + £8k”, arithmetically meaningless as a single number but correct per-currency. Use PP Revenue by Currency for the breakdown, or wait for the FX-normalised version on the roadmap.
Why doesn’t my PayPal total match my commerce platform’s “PayPal” filter?
Three usual reasons: (1) the commerce platform’s “paid via PayPal” tag includes PayPal Express, PayPal Credit, Pay Later, and Venmo (all of which sum here too) but excludes any PayPal-bridged-card flows where the gateway recorded “card” instead of “PayPal”; (2) timezone differences move boundary-day orders; (3) refunds processed in PayPal but not yet synced back to Shopify (or vice versa) cause short-term drift. After 24-48 hours the two numbers converge.
Are Late Capture or Hold transactions counted?
No. PayPal’s P (pending) covers eCheque clearance, SEPA, risk holds, and authorisation-without-capture states. None contribute. When the hold resolves to S they count then.
The PayPal share of my revenue is shrinking, should I worry?
Not by itself. Successful migrations to Stripe (or Apple Pay direct) often shrink PayPal share without shrinking PayPal absolute volume. Watch absolute PP Total Transaction Volume against the previous 30 days, not the share-of-total. If the absolute number drops > 15% vs prior period the alert will fire.