Creating Your Account

To begin, you need a PayPal account. PayPal recommends that you use no live accounts in the sandbox, but ultimately you'll need a live PayPal account to get paid. However, you can play in the sandbox all day without providing PayPal (or anyone else) any banking information or funds.

To test and develop solutions with PayPal, you need to create at least three PayPal accounts: one developer account, and two fake accounts for testing purposes (one representing a seller and the other a customer). The developer account does not require credit card or bank account information; it simply tells PayPal who is tinkering around on the servers. The two fake accounts are created after you log into the developer.paypal.com server; we'll get to those in a minute. Outside the sandbox or test area, these testing accounts are unrecognized by PayPal.

To create a PayPal developer account follow these steps:

• Open your browser and browse to developer.paypal.com.
• Click the Sign Up Now link (see Figure 1).
• Complete the sign-up process by following the instructions and clicking the Sign Up button at the bottom of that page.

Figure 1: You need a real PayPal account to play in the sandbox but do not need to provide financial information.

The sign up page is self-explanatory, so I won't bore you with step-by-step instructions here. After you sign up, PayPal sends you a verification e-mail. You need to follow the link as described in the message and verify that the e-mail address used belongs to you. Remember, you don't have to use your real PayPal account e-mail address.

Let's assume you have a valid account, and begin experimenting.

Having browsed to developer.paypal.com and logged in, you are presented with the developer sandbox (see Figure 2). This view of the sandbox is very straightforward, but establishing and verifying accounts can be confusing. Multiple instances of your browser are opened, and the process quickly wanders away from developer central area. It would be better if PayPal kept developers squarely planted on this page and incorporated a wizard-like approach for working in the sandbox. We'll skip all the confusion and get right to it.

Figure 2: The developer sandbox.

To get everything set up so you can create your application, you need to do the following:

• Create a buyer and seller account in the sandbox.
• Verify the phony e-mail addresses in the sandbox.
• Add phony bank information for each user.
• Create and test a Buy Now button.

I'll walk you through each of these steps.

To create the buyer and seller accounts, click on the sandbox tab you see in Figure 2. Click the Create Account link, as shown in Figure 3. This process is very similar to creating a real account. Your account is associated with your e-mail address, so never use a real e-mail address or a real PayPal account in the sandbox.

Figure 3: Click Create Account to create each test account; at a minimum you need two test accounts.

When you click Create Account, a second browser instance opens. Although this second browser uses a wizard approach for creating the account, this is where things start to get confusing.

Follow the instructions for creating a personal or business account. For testing, it doesn't matter which you create. You'll be able to tell that you are in a testing area by the presence of a PayPal SandBox logo in the upper-right area of the page. Also, note the presence of the Merchant Tools tab here (see Figure 4, which also shows the sandbox logo). I think developers would be better served by combining the account sign-up, send and request money, and merchant tools with the developer tabs on the previous page, shown in Figure 3.

Figure 4: Account sign up for PayPal test accounts.

Verifying Your E-mail Address

After you create the account — remember to use a phony e-mail address — the confirmation is be sent to the e-mail inbox found on the e-mail tab on the Developer Central page shown in Figure 3. To get to it, don't close the sandbox page in figure 4; simply switch to the developer page's e-mail tab and look for the message with a subject Activate Your PayPal Account. All of your test account e-mail messages go here. (Your developer account is used to distinguish your sandbox from every other developers' sandbox.)

Open the activation "e-mail" and activate the test account. This process is almost identical to activating a developer account, which we did earlier. Next, repeat the process for a second test account. For simplicity, I named my accounts retailer@nowhere.com and customer@nowhere.com. These names must be unique, so you have to use something else. Make sure you verify the e-mail address for both test accounts (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: The test account verification e-mail.

Notice that the verification e-mail message opens a third instance of your browser and that the hyperlink is not a hyperlink at all. You have to copy and paste the link into a fourth instance of a browser to verify the test e-mail address. (Remember how I said all of these browser instances can get confusing?)

Associating a Bank Account with Your PayPal Account

After you sign up, the next step is some instructions indicating how to verify the account. Just click continue, and you will be taken to your account page (see Figure 6).

Notice the status of the account: unverified. Verification simply means to add a bank or credit card to the account. Again, the sandbox has a link located on the left side of the page shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: The account page for my new test account. (Notice the sandbox logo is still present.)

You can either add a bank account here or at the end of the e-mail verification process (see Figure 7). Either way, all of the information is fictitious at this point, and account and routing numbers are generated automatically for you by PayPal.

Figure 7: Add a fictitious bank account to verify your test account.

Make sure you verify — add an account for — both test accounts.

Do you have browser fatigue yet? We are almost ready to start selling now.