At PayPal's San Jose campus, developers from around the globe gathered for PayPal Dev Days 2025, a 24-hour hackathon bringing together some of the most creative minds in tech. The event offered three distinct tracks: building agentic integrations, creating applications on Replit, and upgrading legacy integrations with PayPal's latest SDKs. For our team "Codebusters" – Albert, Max, Michel, and Martin – the choice was easy. We had community feedback that they wanted to address, and this was the perfect opportunity to transform it into a meaningful solution.
The challenge: Turning community feedback into innovation
Community feedback drives everything we do. Recently, we heard from merchants that PayPal buttons on product-heavy pages weren't performing as expected. The existing integration worked well for single products, but for merchants with dynamic category pages, the experience wasn't seamless enough. The technical issue stemmed from an older SDK, but the impact was straightforward: checkout wasn't fast enough. As team lead Max explained, the only workaround was disabling buttons on key pages—a compromise that served no one well. This feedback presented a clear mission: completely rebuild the integration using PayPal's new Web SDK V6 to deliver an instantaneous checkout experience.
The solution: Modernizing PayPal integration for Shopware 6
During the hackathon, the Codebusters rebuilt the integration from the ground up, focusing on three core improvements:
Faster performance By implementing non-blocking SDK loading, pages now load instantly without waiting for external dependencies. The result is a checkout experience that feels lightning-fast.
Simplified architecture The new approach replaces complex script management with a single, unified loader. This creates a cleaner, more reliable system that's easier to maintain and debug.
Enhanced intelligence The modernized architecture includes built-in logic for dynamic features like Buy Now, Pay Later, automatically knowing when and where to appear based on context.
Within hours, the team had a working prototype demonstrating significant performance improvements. Where buttons previously lagged, they now appeared instantaneously.
Recognition and results
Codebusters' work earned second place in the global competition. According to PayPal's official announcement, "Team Codebusters modernized the PayPal integration for Shopware 6 by upgrading from the old JavaScript SDK (v5) to the beta PayPal JS SDK (v6). This improves performance, maintainability, and aligns with PayPal's latest standards." This recognition validates our commitment to community-driven innovation and demonstrates the impact of listening to merchant feedback.
Why this investment matters
When we developed this new integration, our goal extended beyond adding another feature. We wanted to create a solution that reflects our approach to growth: listening to community needs, collaborating on solutions, and innovating together. A faster, more seamless checkout directly benefits merchant success by improving customer experience. Since merchant success drives our entire ecosystem, investing in core components like payment processing strengthens the entire community.
What's next
This hackathon represents significant progress, with more developments planned. The team is preparing for PayPal's full V6 feature release, which will enable us to roll out these improvements to all merchants.
Codebusters' achievement demonstrates what's possible when community feedback meets focused innovation. We encourage continued feedback and collaboration as we work together to build a stronger, faster, and more successful Shopware ecosystem.
Watch the hackathon in action
You want to see the energy, innovation, and teamwork behind the scenes? Watch the highlights from PayPal Dev Days 2025, including our live demo of the new Shopware PayPal integration
