Why is Stripe or PayPal getting credit for my sales?
When buyers leave to pay or verify their card and come back, GA4 can credit the payment site with the sale.
The short answer
Because the buyer left your site to pay and came back. When someone is sent to PayPal, a hosted Stripe page or their bank's card-verification step, then returns to your confirmation page, GA4 can treat the return as a new visit referred by that payment site. The sale gets credited to PayPal instead of the ad, email or search that actually brought the buyer in.
Signs it's happening
- Payment or bank domains appear in your referral traffic with unusually high conversion rates.
- Purchases credited to Referral grow while paid and email look weaker.
- Domains such as paypal.com, checkout.stripe.com or bank verification pages show up as sources of purchases.
How to fix it
- In GA4, open the web data stream's tag settings and add the payment and card-verification domains to the list of unwanted referrals.
- If your checkout runs on another domain you own, set up cross-domain measurement for it instead.
- Test a purchase with each payment method and confirm the sale keeps its original source.
Sales already recorded
The fix applies from the day you make it. It doesn't correct sales already recorded, so note the change on your reports.
