I struggled all day trying to use the sandbox for PayPal then I found this forum article.
Thanks to Rob McColl for posting this. I found it so helpful that I have posted it here so others could benefit from it. If you come across articles, tips, tricks let me know and I will post them as well. You can email them to me at susan@clinchportal.com or chris.williams@clinchportal.com
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http://www.paypaldeveloper.com/pdn/board/message?board.id=sandbox&message.id=6035#M6035
After 6 hours of pain with PayPal support (or lack thereof) I present the following 30 step process to creating, confirming, and verifying test accounts through the broken Developer Central Sandbox.
I hope this helps other people, and that the years of life I've lost over the last several hours is worth it.
To Setup Sandbox and Get Test API Credentials:
Prerequisites:
* Create a user account to access the Developer Central Sandbox.
* Log in to the Sandbox account
* Create a Test Account of type 'seller'.
- This will throw an error message on saving, but it will still create the account. Click the Test Accounts tab to see the account it created.
Create Confirm the email address:
1. Create business test account (done in prerequisite above)
2. Log into PayPal Sandbox with test business account details created earlier.
3. Go to Profile Tab
4. Go to Email
5. Choose the email address and click 'Confirm'
6. Go back to the Sandbox Test Environment and click the Test Email tab
7. Open the email with subject line 'Activate Your PayPal Account'
8. From the email body, select the confirmation URL and paste into new browser window - it will load the PayPal site (in sandbox mode).
9. Log in with business account.
10. From the landing page, click the 'confirm email' link in the 'To Do List' box.
11. Click the 'click here if a link doesn't appear in the email' link.
12. Paste in the confirmation number from the email in step 8, and click confirm. A confirmation of success should be displayed.
13. Click Continue.
Create Bank Accounts For Test Business Account:
14. Click the Profile tab
15. Click Bank Accounts link
16. Create a fake bank account. Test Bank. Use BSB 242-200 for Australia. Any random integer for account number, so long as it's not already being used by another PayPal account. I ended up having to mash the keypad until I found an unused number.
17. Confirm the bank account by clicking the 'confirm' link after the step above.
18. Step 17 loads another page where you need to click 'Submit'.
19. Step 18 loads another page where you need to click 'I Agree'.
20. The account should now be verified.
21. Click the Profile Tab again.
22. Click API Setup
23. Click Request API Credentials
24. Select API Signature
25. Click I Agree, Click Submit.
26. Copy the details to a safe place for later reference.
Developer Central Sandbox
27. Go back to the Developer central sandbox and login with your account details created in the prerequisite section of this document (i.e., not your test business account, but your actual Developer Central Sandbox account).
28. The Test business account should now be verfied.
29. Click API Credentials tab.
30. The API credentials obtained in step 26 should appear.
