Setting Up PayPal Sandbox

I had a fair bit of trouble getting the sandbox setup properly for paypal so I thought I would put some steps down to make it a bit more easier for anyone just getting started with setting up the pay pal sandbox.

1 - Go to https://developer.paypal.com/ and click the sign up now button. create an account (your username must be a different one if you have a paypal account)

2 - Click on Test Accounts, and add a business and personal account (note that if you are an australian you cant get the API keys without selecting US from the where do you live dropdown). Take note of the passwords that you use. When you create an account it creates a test bank account and test credit card for you to test your code with. You can also take note of these details for use later on in your testing.

3 - Click on API credentials, and take note of your API account, username, password and Signature. These are obviously used within your code config.

4 - Click on Test Accounts, and making sure your business account is selected, click on the enter sandbox test site button.

5 - Sign into your test site with your business account users details, your business accounts username should already be pre-filled in on the login form. Note that you must login with your business account details and not your API credentials.

6 - In the My Account Overview page, click on the step buttons to confirm your details and setup the api permissions.

7 - Most of the standard methods are activated once you have done this, but some are not. To check your api permissions click on my account/profile to go to your profile summary, then in your account information links click on API Access. Check the boxes next to the API's you wish to use, then click submit.

8 - You will prolly need some funds in your account if you are using payment methods such as mass pay, so click the Add Funds button and add some cash. Note that this is for testing use only and the money transfer is from a fictional bank.

9- These funds that you transferred need to be cleared, go to my accounts and scroll down to the bottom, you will see the fund transfers in the list, click on details link for that transaction, then click on clear transaction to complete the process.

That should be it, double check you have your API credentials setup properly in your code and you should be able to hit the sandbox for testing.

happy coding :)