Sandbox accounts

Use sandbox accounts to generate mock transactions to test your app.

Overview

The PayPal sandbox supports these account types:

Account type Represents
Personal The customer in a transaction.
Business The merchant in a transaction.

To test a typical PayPal transaction, you must use both types of accounts.

When you register as a PayPal developer on the developer site, the PayPal sandbox creates these sandbox accounts:

  • A business account and associated API test credentials. For example, pp.merch01-facilitator@example.com .
  • A default personal account. For example, pp.merch01-buyer@example.com .

You can create additional sandbox accounts on the developer site or directly on the sandbox site, https://www.sandbox.paypal.com.

Note You can link a sandbox account to your developer account.

Some PayPal transactions require more than one buyer-and-seller pair. For example, parallel payment calls and Adaptive calls each require two different business accounts but for different reasons. In these cases, you must create additional sandbox business accounts to play the roles of the entities in your transactions.

For information about sandbox account roles, see plan your sandbox accounts.

Create and manage sandbox accounts

On the developer site, you can:

Tip: To simplify the creation of multiple accounts, do one of the following:

Create a personal sandbox account

Create a personal sandbox account to represent the buyer in a transaction. The PayPal sandbox automatically creates your first personal sandbox account when you sign up for a developer account on the developer site. To generate the personal sandbox account name, PayPal appends -buyer to your email address.

When you create a sandbox account, an email and password are generated. You use the email address to reference the sandbox account in your test API calls. You also use the email and password values to log in to the sandbox accounts page to view and configure the sandbox account.

To create an additional personal sandbox account:

  1. Log in to the Developer Dashboard and navigate to the Sandbox>>Accounts page under Testing Tools in the header.
  2. Click Create Account .
  3. Set the Account Type to Personal .
  4. Select a Country .
  5. Click Create Account .

A personal account with default values for balances and other information is created for you. If you need more customization of the test values, click Create Custom Account in the Create Sandbox Account dialog.

Create a business sandbox account

The PayPal sandbox automatically creates your first business sandbox account when you sign up for a developer account on the developer site. To generate the account name, PayPal appends -facilitator to your email name. PayPal assigns a set of test API credentials to the account. Use the account to create mock PayPal transactions in the PayPal sandbox.

To create an additional business sandbox account:

  1. Log in to the Developer Dashboard and navigate to the Sandbox Accounts page under Testing Tools in the header.
  2. Click Create Account .
  3. Set the Account Type to Business .
  4. Select a Country .
  5. Click Create Account .

A business account with default values for balances and other information is created for you. If you need more customization of the test values, click Create Custom Account in the Create Sandbox Account dialog.

Manage sandbox accounts

On the developer site sandbox accounts page, you can:

Change a sandbox account password

To change the account password:

  1. Log in to the Developer Dashboard and navigate to the Sandbox Accounts page under Testing Tools in the header.
  2. In the Manage Accounts column, click the icon associated with the account you want to manage.
  3. Click View/Edit Account .
  4. On the Profile tab of the Account Details dialog box, click Change password .
  5. Enter a new password and click Save , located just below the password text box.

Delete a sandbox account

To delete an account:

  1. Log in to the Developer Dashboard and navigate to the Sandbox Accounts page under Testing Tools in the header.
  2. In the Manage Accounts column, click the icon associated with the account you want to manage.
  3. Click Delete . A message confirms the successful deletion of the account(s).

Note You cannot delete the default `-facilitator` and `-buyer` sandbox accounts that the PayPal sandbox creates.

Link a sandbox account to your developer account

To link a pre-existing sandbox account to your developer account:

  1. Log in to the developer dashboard and navigate to Sandbox Accounts page under * Testing Tools . Click on the link for authenticating with the credentials of the test account you to which you want to link.
  2. On the log in page, enter your sandbox account credentials.
  3. A message confirms successful log in. Your sandbox account appears on the developer site.

Note If your sandbox account is already linked to another developer account, you cannot link it to your developer account.

Duplicate a sandbox account

If you have an existing Business or Personal test account, you can clone that account to create a new account of the same type. This can be helpful if you're trying to model several merchants or customers that have slightly varying properties. By creating multiple sandbox accounts, you can test various payment flows and error scenarios.

When you clone a sandbox account, PayPal automatically copies the account type (Business or Personal), PayPal balance, first name, and last name of the original account to the new account. PayPal creates an email address for the account by appending -1 to the original email address. If you clone the same account again, PayPal follows the same pattern and increments the ID. A second cloned account appends -2 to the email address.

After you clone an account, you can edit the PayPal balance, first name, last name, and email address. You must also set a password for the new account, the password is not cloned.

To duplicate a sandbox account:

  1. Log in to the devbeloper dashboard and navigate to the Sandbox Accounts page under Testing Tools to view your existing sandbox accounts.
  2. In the Manage Accounts column, click the icon associated with the account you want to manage.
  3. Select Duplicate Account .
  4. Edit any fields you want to modify, supply payment information, and click Create Account to complete the process.

Note When you duplicate a sandbox account, the Pro status is disabled by default and any flags that have been set up by your Account Manager are not duplicated to the new account.

Some sandbox accounts have cloning disabled for the following reasons:

  • Test account is still in the creation process.
  • The test account partially or completely failed on the back-end during the creation process and such accounts cannot be cloned.