PayPal has opened up a tonnes of API resource for developers. The most prominent effect around this can been seen in custom built shopping carts with streamlined flow providing a great user experience to buyers. PayPal APIs also help with customize payment strategies, subscriptions and a whole lot more for those who know how to use them.

PayPal API restrictions

PayPal API usage is restricted to users (merchants to be precise) having a Premier or Business account with PayPal. It has been so because these are the organizations or individuals who would actually be in need of transmitting or accessing information to and from PayPal servers without using PayPal’s website. If one holds a personal or student account with PayPal, then he/she would mostly be using it to make payments and thus would never have the need to access or transmit transaction information or customize anything during the transaction flow. Therefore, if you wish to get the PayPal API username and other credentials, view Paypal account types and sign up for a business or premier account; you can also upgrade PayPal Personal account to a business one.

Generate PayPal API username, password and signature

In  few easy steps, you can generate and obtain the PayPal API credentials to get started.

• Login to your PayPal merchant account.
• From the main menu, hover on Profile and select My Selling Tools. Alternatively, click on the Profile link then select the ‘My Selling Tools’ tab as will be shown on the left. You can also click here, enter your login information and select the My Selling Tools tab. We would still recommend the earlier process.
• Click on the Update link that shows up for API Access, under the  Selling online section.
• If you had generate API credentials earlier, then you would see View API Signature. Otherwise, you will notice a create Request API credentials link. Either ways, click on the link that shows up.
• On the follow up page, click on Request API Signature and click Agree and Submit.
• The page reloads, and you can then copy PayPal API username, password and signature values.

Now that you have access to the API credentials, don’t miss out this tutorial following which you can learn how you can enter these into PaySketch and connect it to your PayPal account.

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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 Home page visible by default. This page shows your PayPal Balance, the most recent activity, links to notifications (if any) and links to account tools. 

New Interface

To get to the API access view using the new PayPal interface:-

• Click on your name at the top right
• Select the ‘Account Settings’
• From the Account Settings view, select ‘Account access’
• Click on the link next to ‘API access’ on the right.

Now, scroll to the bottom of the page where it shows the card for ‘NVP/SOAP API Integration (Classic)‘ and click the link on the card to generate your API username, key and password.

Once you generate the credentials, copy the:-

• API username
• API password
• API signature

Old Interface

This is how you can navigate to the 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.

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 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‘

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.

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.

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.

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

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