How to Use Paddle Inline Checkout in WordPress
Paddle offers two ways to show its checkout. The overlay opens the payment form in a popup on top of your page. Inline renders the same form inside the page, in a box you position, so the customer never leaves the layout you designed. On WordPress you get either one from a WooCommerce gateway plugin, and this post walks through the inline path with PimiPay.
Get the domain approved first
Nothing below works on a live store until Paddle has approved the domain. Paddle reviews every domain and subdomain a checkout will open from, and only approved domains can take live payments. This applies to overlay and inline alike, so it is not a cost of choosing inline. It is the one thing to do before touching a plugin setting.
In the Paddle dashboard, open Checkout, then Website approval, and submit the exact hostname your store runs on. Submit each subdomain separately. Paddle approves most submissions automatically. If yours goes to manual review, it typically takes five to seven business days. The sandbox environment skips this check, which is why a checkout that works in sandbox can fail the moment you switch to live.
While you are there, set a default payment link under Checkout settings. Paddle will not create transactions without one, and every checkout creates a transaction. Sandbox and live each need their own.
Turn on inline in the plugin
With the domain approved, go to WooCommerce, Settings, Payments, and open the PimiPay Paddle gateway. Find Checkout Display and change it from Overlay to Inline. Save. That is the whole configuration. There is no template to edit and no script to add.
The plugin tells Paddle to render the payment form inline and gives it a container to render into. Two pages carry that container. The order-received page shows it under a “Complete Your Payment” heading right after the order is placed. The order-pay page shows it inside the payment box, for customers paying a pending order from their account. The regular checkout page is not one of them. WooCommerce still collects the billing details there, creates the order, and moves to the order-received page, where the Paddle form appears. Nothing pops up unless the embedded form fails to load; then the Pay Now button opens the overlay as a backup.
What inline renders, and what it does not
Paddle’s frame contains the payment form only: the card fields, wallet buttons such as Apple Pay and PayPal, and Paddle’s footer with its terms. It does not contain the order summary. Line items, totals, tax and your refund policy link are your page’s job, and that is a real difference from the overlay, which shows the summary inside the popup.
On the order-received page this is fine, because WooCommerce already prints the order table above the payment box. On a heavily customised order-pay template, check that the summary is visible next to the form. If a store’s template removes the container, the plugin notices and opens the overlay instead, so a payment is never blocked by a missing div.
The frame starts at 450 pixels tall and grows with the form. Paddle needs at least 312 pixels of width, so narrow sidebars are out. The Checkout Theme and Checkout Language settings apply to both display modes, so a dark inline form on a dark store is one more dropdown away.
Should you switch?
Overlay is the default and the more thoroughly tested path. Choose inline when the page around the payment matters: a branded order-received page, or a design where a modal would hide context the customer still needs. Switching back is the same dropdown, and nothing about orders, refunds or webhooks changes between the two modes. The settings reference is on the checkout docs page, with the rest of the plugin’s behaviour in the FAQ.