Paypal: Developer's subaccounts?

uli · 2014-06-06 13:06:27

In order to set up a mini store I’ve been offered a Paypal account password to a PP business account. Before I agree: I wonder if there is such a thing as a developer sub-acount that would not let me conduct transactions and see account balances, but copy the necessary code, grab certificates and IDs etc to make the whole thing work. How do you more PP-experienced guys proceed there?

Bloke · 2014-06-06 14:22:55

You can use the developer area for testing, if that’s what you mean. Sign up for a free account for yourself, then you can log in and set up fake “customer” accounts, order things from your site using the fake email addresses, process transactions, even simulate IPN callbacks to your website. It’s a bit clunky, but it works.

uli · 2014-06-06 15:32:15

Bloke wrote #281264:

You can use the developer area for testing, if that’s what you mean.

Thanks, Paypal is so confusing and unwieldy, you find better hints from googling than from within the manual. “Sandbox” doesn’t come up in the search results, incredible.

Would I need to sign up with my own business account (as I understand you) or is it sufficient to get login-data of a sandbox account from a business account owner (which I’d prefer)? Or is the latter that “fake customer account” you mentioned? ATM I’ve just seen a video, and want to avoid having my own business account.
Will the sandbox let me test yabshop test carts, too?

Bloke · 2014-06-06 16:00:23

uli wrote #281265:

Would I need to sign up with my own business account (as I understand you) or is it sufficient to get login-data of a sandbox account from a business account owner (which I’d prefer)?

From what I can recall of the process, signing up for a developer account is wholly different from signing up for your own PayPal (user) account. You don’t have to be a PayPal user to developer for it (afaicr).

So you just register as a developer, and that give you access to the sandbox. When you log into the sandbox you can then create a “merchant” and “customers”, which will give you long email addresses (like cust_12345678@whatever.com or something).

You use those email addresses in your yab_shop cart to buy things fropm the “merchant” and will get redirected to PayPal where you can complete the order. From your PayPal developer account you’ll be able to see these transactions in your “merchant account”.

You can further trigger IPN notifications back to your website if you wish.

I found it very handy to have two or three browsers open: one for the merchant login, one for the developer and one for your website.

Hope that helps.

uli · 2014-06-07 15:37:36

Bloke wrote #281267:

You use those email addresses in your yab_shop cart to buy things fropm the “merchant” and will get redirected to PayPal where you can complete the order.

Great, I hoped it would work like that. Thanks also for your tips, Stef.

Apparently I can simply use my existing (personal, non-business) account to have the developer and sandbox stuff, hope it also covers the possibilities of a business account. Will see when I get to the details’ grips. ATM I’m preparing for a client talk, spent several hours reading dev docs but–damned–even then you still feel like you haven’t understood as much as a grain of sand of their API.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2014-06-06 13:06:27