Plugin Hidden Behaviour

Hi @simeonokwo,

Thanks for sharing the details, that does sound confusing, and I can understand why it was frustrating.

What you ran into is expected behaviour in some hosting environments and isn’t actually hidden or malicious behaviour from WooPayments.

Here’s what likely happened:

• WooPayments was installed/activated via Softaculous, not from the WordPress admin Plugins screen.
• When plugins are managed at the hosting level, they can sometimes be:
  • Activated before WordPress fully registers them
  • Missing from the Plugins UI due to file or permission inconsistencies
• WooPayments was active enough to hook into checkout, but not cleanly registered in the dashboard, which caused checkout to stall.

Once you removed it from Softaculous WordPress Manager, WordPress correctly stopped loading the plugin, which is why checkout started working again.

Recommended next steps (best practice):

1. Avoid managing plugins from multiple places
   • Use either WordPress admin or your host’s plugin manager — not both.
   • This prevents plugins from being partially installed or ghost-activated.
2. Check for leftover WooPayments data
   • Go to WooCommerce → Status → Logs and confirm no WooPayments errors remain.
   • In WooCommerce → Settings → Payments, ensure WooPayments is no longer listed.
3. Verify plugin integrity
   • In WooCommerce → Status → System status, check that there are no “missing files” or permission warnings.
4. If you plan to use WooPayments again
   • Install and activate it only from Plugins → Add New inside WordPress.
   • Complete the full onboarding flow before enabling it for live checkout.

If checkout is now proceeding normally, no further action is required.

If you still see payment issues, feel free to share:

• Your WooCommerce version
• Hosting provider
• Any relevant logs from WooCommerce → Status → Logs

We’ll be happy to help clarify further.