Skip to main content

PayPal API Credentials

Acquiring Credentials​

To enable PayPal support, Backlight's Cart requires a set of credentials issued by PayPal to the account holder. Unfortunately, PayPal buries these credentials and makes them difficult to find. Shame on PayPal. Follow these steps to get at your credentials (steps may vary somewhat by regional PayPal service).

To gain credentials, you should be registered with PayPal as a Business or Premium account.

After logging into PayPal, click on "Profile" on the top-right.

On the left side of the next screen, click on "Selling tools".

Several line items will be displayed. Locate the line "API Access" and click on "Update".

You will be given two options; go with "Option 2" to request or access your API credentials. Using the information provided here, you should be able to go live with PayPal support in your cart.

Testing Credentials​

PayPal offers the ability to test the checkout mechanism without real transactions going through. To use this mechanism, you'll need developer credentials from PayPal, obtained with the following steps:

  • Login to https://developer.paypal.com with your PayPal account
  • Click on Applications
  • Click on Sandbox accounts on the side menu
  • Create two accounts, one Business, and the other Personal
  • Click on the 'profile' link under the Business account
  • Click on the API Credentials tab
  • Find your three credentials (Username, Password and Signature) under the Classic TEST API credentials heading
  • Plug these into the PayPal "Testing" credential settings of the Cart Settings
  • Make sure that the cart setting PayPal Deployment is set to Testing
  • Test the cart, and when checking out via PayPal, log in with the username and password created for the Personal account on step 4.

It is important that before sending customers to your galleries, that you change the PayPal Deployment to Live so that real checkouts can be made.