PayPal API Credentials

PayPal API Credentials

PayPal API Credentials are a combination of three fields which lets you integrate your online store or shopping cart, build custom shopping carts and communicate with PayPal servers for transaction related information. These credentials are also required for you to connect PaySketch with your PayPal Account. PaySketch then makes it really easy for you to search PayPal Transactions, track online sales and payment, monitor sales performance of various products and a lot more. This initial setup tutorial, will walk you through the steps on to obtain your PayPal API Credentials and then use them to connect PaySketch with your PayPal account.

Generate PayPal API Credentials

Login to your PayPal Account

Login to your PayPal Account by entering your PayPal username and password. Please keep in mind that API credentials are only available to PayPal merchant accounts. That is, only if you are a PayPal Premier or a PayPal Business account holder will you be able to generate the API Credentials. The logic behind this is that only merchants (who sell online), would be needing access to such credentials to integrate and create custom shopping carts. If you are a PayPal Personal or Student account holder, then you will not be able to generate API Credentials. Have a look at this page to compare PayPal account types.

API Page

Post login, you will have your PayPal overview page visible by default. The Overview page shows your PayPal Balance, the most recent activity, links to notifications (if any) and links to account tools. In sum, it basically looks like a bank transactions page which shows recent PayPal transactions and the net amount in your account.

Now that PayPal has introduced and is rolling out a new interface, we’ll show how you can reach the API page through both the interfaces.

New Interface

On the new interface, its pretty straightforward:-

  • Click on the ‘Tools’ menu option
  • Select the ‘All Tools’ option
  • Now you’ll be presented with a plethora of tools. What we are looking for is ‘API credentials’. You could rather search for the term ‘API credentials’ on that page or simply scroll through the entire list of tools.
  • Hit the API credentials tool box and you’ll be redirected to the API Signature creation page.
Note

If you are visiting the ‘All Tools’ page for the first time, PayPal will ask you to click on a couple of buttons like ‘Show more’ and ‘Got it’.

API credentials page new PayPal interface

 

Old Interface

This is how you can navigate to API Credentials page on the old interface:-

  • Notice an option ‘Profile’ in the ‘My Account’ menu. Hover over it with the mouse and you’ll get a list of other available options within Profile.
  • Select ‘My Selling Tools’. Note that PayPal account holders from some countries might not see the My Selling Tools as an option in the Profile list – they can choose to simply click on the ‘Profile’ option.

Paypal Home

Note

For those who didn’t see the ‘My Selling tools’ option in the Profile menu list, click on the ‘My Selling Tools’ option which will show up along the left hand side menu.

The available options on the left menu of the visible page would be:-

  1. My business tab
  2. My money
  3. My settings
  4. My selling tools

Locate API Access under Selling Tools on the Right. The description of API Access would be – Manage API credentials to integrate my PayPal account with my online store or shopping cart.

Click on the Update link shown for the API Access option.

PayPal Selling tools

PayPal API Access

The page will reload to the API Access page. If you have not generated the PayPal API before, the page will display 2 options using which you could request API access.

To setup PaySketch with PayPal, we need to request the API using ‘Option 2′, which will be – Request API credentials to create your own API username and password

Click on the ‘Request API Credentials‘ link. Those who had generated the API credentials in the past will get the link to ‘View API Credentials

Request PayPal API Credentials

Requesting PayPal API Credentials

After you click on the  ‘Request API credentials’ link, the page reloads and will give you 2 options. We need to select the 1st option i.e. ‘Request API Signature‘. Click on Agree and Submit.

Request PayPal API Signature

View and Copy PayPal API Credentials

PayPal will generate the API Username, Password and Signature for your account. These will be visible as textual data on the page. Highlight data for each field and copy the details to a text editor on your computer. Click on Done and then logout of PayPal.

PayPal API Credentials Signature Username and Password

Enter PayPal API Credentials in PaySketch

After having generated and copied the PayPal API Credentials from your PayPal account, its now time to enter these in PaySketch. Doing so will link PaySketch with your PayPal account so that you get to manage all your PayPal transactions with ease. Follow the steps below to have PaySketch linked up with your PayPal Account. Please make sure that you are connected to the internet before getting PaySketch setup with your PayPal account.

  1. Run PaySketch and login with your username and password (this is not the PayPal account credentials, but the login credentials for PaySketch). These will be requested for only if you have created them earlier, else you will automatically see the Summary Dashboard on PaySketch.
  2. From the PaySketch Dashboards dropdown menu, select the Settings dashboard.
  3. After the Settings dashboard loads, select the API tab. Note that for security, you would need to create a login before you could connect PaySketch with PayPal. If you haven’t already, then switch to the adjacent tab User and quickly create a login account for yourself. This will ensure that only you have access to your PayPal data on PaySketch.
  4. Enter (or copy and paste) the PayPal API Username, API Password and API Signature.
  5. Now in the ‘Download data for’ selection, choose the number of years and months of PayPal data (starting) you would want to synchronize PaySketch with. Choose this option wisely as you would not be able to jump to a prior date after setting up the account. The only possibility to do so would be when you have to ‘Delete Account and all related Data’ from PaySketch and start afresh. For example:- If you select 2 years and 6 months, then PaySketch will get and update all your PayPal transactions starting from 2 years and 6 months ago. If today were January 1st 2014, then you will have all transactions starting July 2012. Ofcourse, all new transactions occur will automatically be fetched, its just that you will not be able to have the ones that occurred before the ‘Download data for’ timeslot.
  6. Click on the ‘Setup and Sync‘ button and PaySketch will automatically start fetching your PayPal transactions and other details.

Paysketch enter Paypal Api Credentials

 

In sum, we learned how to generate PayPal API Credentials and enter them in PaySketch to have it setup and synchronized with your PayPal account. If you have any questions, comments or feedback, please feel free to enter them below or send a quick email to contact@paysketch.com

2 replies
  1. Sienna says:

    So glad that it was thoroughly explained on how i could get papal api details and this has helped me get through one of the major roadblocks in setting up my shopping cart. Thanks a ton!

    Reply

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