Magento – Paypal Express Checkout Don’t Skip the order review step

One way to achieve this is in the file: app/design/frontend/base/default/template/checkout/onepage/payment/methods.phtml When looping over the selected methods add something like:

<?php if($_code == 'YOUR METHOD'): ?>
     <span class="no-display"><input id="p_method_<?php echo $_code ?>" value="<?php echo $_code ?>" type="radio" name="payment[method]" checked="checked" class="radio" /></span>
    <?php $oneMethod = $_code; ?>
<?php endif; ?>
    <label for="p_method_<?php echo $_code ?>"><?php echo $this->escapeHtml($this->getMethodTitle($_method)) ?> <?php echo $this->getMethodLabelAfterHtml($_method) ?></label>

Then add some JS at the bottom:

<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
<?php if (is_string($oneMethod)): ?>
payment.switchMethod('<?php echo $oneMethod ?>');
    <?php endif; ?>
//]]>

In reality this is all that default magento template is doing to help the user select only a single option if one is set via the admin. However what I think might be happening in your case is that you have 2 methods available even though one may not be visible as a option. Adding this to the template will select that option by default and move to next step.

After a call with a PayPal integration engineer I finally figured it out! The Skip Order Review Step only works when customers first work their way through the Magento checkout flow, then when they get to the Payment Method option select PayPal. In this case if you have Skip Order Review Step set to Yes it will indeed skip a final confirmation step on Magento, bill the customer and redirect them to /checkout/onepage/success/ in Magento.

This is not the case for the so called 'Shortcut' links optionally displayed on the product and cart pages. You'll see the two options Shortcut on Shopping Cart and Shortcut on Product View. This is the button I was clicking that raised this question... In my case I was clicking from the cart page. The reason PayPal has to send the customer through a review step in this case is because Magento hasn't collected shipping address or shipping method, so PayPal has to capture at a minimum shipping address and billing address, and optionally shipping method then pass it back over to Magento for a final review.

Long story short - I've disabled both the 'Shortcut' buttons!