Unable to setup in sandbox mode

  • Resolved SimonGiddings

    (@simongiddings)


    1 year, 8 months ago

    Plugin version : 2.0.3

    I have been trying to get paypal in sandbox mode to work on my staging site.
    The documentation for finding the relevant credentials is out of date and does not reflect the PayPal site and where to find information.

    If I try to use the automated setup, I am systematically sent to creating a new paypal account, even though I have an existing one. So I went with manual setup.

    I found that I had to create an “application” on the PayPal site to be able to go forward – is the correct ?

    1. I entered the paypal business account email.
    2. I eventually found where my “merchant ID” was, it was not shown in the api details section, and added it as I could not find a specific “sandbox merchant id”
    3. I copied the sandbox api credentials into the two relevant fields
    4. Saved the settings

    The save worked with no error being shown.
    I then clicked on “simulte” to validate that the webhook worked => OK => The webhook was received successfully.

    When I now try to pay with paypal, I get the paypal popup showing for a few instants which then closes and the site displays :

    PAYEE_ACCOUNT_INVALID Payee account specified is invalid. Please check the payee.email_address or payee.merchant_id specified and try again. Ensure that either payee.merchant_id or payee.email_address is specified.

    I now at am a loss to know what to do. It took me an age to find the merchant ID, couldn’t find a sandbox merchant id anywhere.

    What can I do, my site is effectively down for the last few months and I am at my whits end !

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Support Syde Niklas

    (@niklasinpsyde)

    Hi @simongiddings

    Thanks for the message.

    The documentation for finding the relevant credentials is out of date and does not reflect the PayPal site and where to find information.

    Can you elaborate on which parts of the setup documentation are outdated? The interface at PayPal changed a bit recently, but the procedure for creating a sandbox account and REST application is still mostly the same, as can be seen in this short video demonstration.
    The team is always working on keeping the documentation updated, and any hints regarding potentially outdated information are appreciated.

    I now at am a loss to know what to do. It took me an age to find the merchant ID, couldn’t find a sandbox merchant id anywhere.

    We regret this wasn’t clear enough from the documentation, which describes how to retrieve the merchant ID. In the PayPal developer dashboard, the merchant ID is listed as “Account ID”, as can be seen in the video above.

    In any case, the best way to prevent issues due to potentially invalid credentials is using the onboarding wizard.

    If I try to use the automated setup, I am systematically sent to creating a new paypal account, even though I have an existing one. So I went with manual setup.

    Are you sure you tried to log in with the correct account?
    When you are logging into the PayPal sandbox, you have to log into the sandbox account email address (as in the video above) and not with your live PayPal account email address which you used to create the sandbox account.
    If you try logging into the sandbox with your live account, PayPal will usually start the registration procedure because there is no PayPal account on the sandbox servers with your live address, as these are two different systems.

    Please give it another try to connect your PayPal account with the login credentials from your sandbox account after watching the video demonstration and let us know how this works for you. Thanks!

    Kind regards,
    Niklas

    Thread Starter SimonGiddings

    (@simongiddings)

    Thank you, the problem was the merchant ID.

    Now that I have replaced it with the right value, all is working.

    One last question though – does this mean that a paypal account can either be in sandbox mode or normal mode and not both at the same time ?

    Plugin Support Syde Niklas

    (@niklasinpsyde)

    Thanks for the feedback. Glad to hear it’s working now!

    The PayPal Sandbox is a separate environment from the production PayPal system. You can read more about it here: https://developer.paypal.com/tools/sandbox/
    This means https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/ and https://www.paypal.com/ are two distinct sites and do not share accounts.

    You can log into https://developer.paypal.com/ with your live PayPal account to create sandbox accounts for the testing environment.
    But you could also visit the sandbox website and register a new account with the same email address as your live PayPal account. That being said, it would still be a separate account on the sandbox environment that doesn’t have a direct relationship to your live PayPal account.
    So this is not like a toggle in your live PayPal account where you switch between live and sandbox mode, but two separate PayPal systems.

    In the PayPal Payments plugin, you can have one live account and one sandbox account connected, but only one of the two can be active at any time.

    I hope this explains it a bit better.
    If you have any doubts or further questions, please do not hesitate to let us know.
    Thanks!

    Kind regards,
    Niklas

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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