Bulk-Upload Sandbox Accounts

APICurrentLast updated: January 10th 2022, @ 10:36:49 am


Overview

Use Bulk Account Upload to upload up to 40 sandbox accounts at a time by configuring and uploading a file with your sandbox account information.

By configuring multiple sandbox accounts, you can simulate all possible payment scenarios as you test your application.

Configure different Personal sandbox accounts to simulate mock customers as verified, non-verified, credit-card users, PayPal users, payment card users, and so on.

Configure sandbox business accounts to represent merchants, third-party merchants, and "API Caller" accounts.

Create sandbox business accounts to cover the various payment methods that your merchants accept. By configuring a mix of sandbox accounts, you can cover the full range of payment scenarios with your test suites.

Bulk sandbox account file

The bulk sandbox account file consists of a header row followed by rows of sandbox accounts. The following example bulk sandbox account file contains two sandbox accountsa US account and a GB account. The attributes for each account are comma-separated.

Important: In the file you upload to PayPal, place the comma-separated titles of your header rows as they appear in this example. If you use commas in individual fields it is necessary to enclose the field in double quotes so as not to cause an error when loading the file.

country_code,account_type,primary_email_alias,password,first_name,last_name,ppBalance,addBank,ccType,payment_card
US,BUSINESS,test-business@account.com,R1ckN0v4k,Rick,Novak,1001,Y,VISA,PAYPAL   
GB,PERSONAL,test-personal@account.com,S4r4C0nn0!,Sara,Connor,1002,N,MASTERCARD,DISCOVER

To create a bulk sandbox account file, you can either:

Create your own bulk sandbox account file

You can create your own bulk sandbox account file. It must be a UTF-16LE text file that contains the following required fields in the order shown:

Header ValueRequiredDescription
country_codeXThe two-letter country code.
account_typeXThe account type (BUSINESS or PERSONAL).
primary_email_aliasXA unique email address for the sandbox account.
Note: The sandbox never sends email to addresses outside of the sandbox environment.
passwordXA password. A password.
Note: Passwords should be 8-10 character; contain both upper and lowercase letters; and at least one number or symbol, for example, !, @, #, $, %, ^. Do not use four or more repeated or consecutive characters, for example, 1111 or 12345678).
first_nameXA first name for the fictitious account.
last_nameXA last name of the account holder.
ppBalanceXA PayPal balance in the range of 0-100000.
addBankXVerified bank status (Y or N).
ccTypeXCredit card type (if appropriate) (DISCOVER, VISA, AMEX, MASTERCARD, or MAESTRO).
payment_cardXPayment card type (DISCOVER or PAYPAL).

In addition to providing all required fields for each sandbox account, configure the file as follows:

  • Encode the file in UTF-16 Little Endian.

    Note: Microsoft Excel uses UTF-16LE encoding when saving files as "unicode text".

  • The file must have a .txt or .csv extension.
  • Separate each attribute in the file with commas.
  • The first row of the file must include the header for each sandbox account attribute provided in the file so that the interpreter recognizes the fields the file contains and an error doesn't occur.
  • The file must have at least one row of sandbox account data and at most 40 rows of account data.
  • The file must not be more than 1 Mb in size.

Download the sample bulk sandbox account file

  1. You can download the sandbox-bulk-headers.csv sample file.
  2. Replace the sample rows in the file with the details of all your sandbox accounts.
  3. Upload the file to the PayPal developer site.

Important: Do not copy and paste the contents of the sample file into a new file, as this may corrupt the formatting of the copied content.

Validation rules

PayPal uses these rules to validate your bulk account file:

  • Each sandbox account (row) must contain all required attributes.
  • Each field in each row must be of the correct type for the associated attribute and each field must contain a valid value for the associated attribute. For example, all countries, card types, amounts, and so on, must be valid for the column in which they are presented.
  • All dependent input fields must be correct for the context in which they are used (for example, only certain card types are valid for each country, and each country-specific validation is honored).
  • Values supplied for enums are case-insensitive.
  • Each sandbox account email ID must be unique across the file, and it must be an available email address within the sandbox environment.