DocumentationCommercePayment Services Guide

Set Up the Testing Sandbox

Last update: Thu Feb 26 2026 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

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Before starting sandbox onboarding, you must sign up for a free PayPal Developer’s account, and create both merchant (to use for onboarding) and shopper accounts (to use for testing your checkout). You can create multiple Developer accounts, if desired.

A PayPal sandbox account allows you to use Payment Services in test mode. PayPal requires that you use a PayPal Developer Portal-generated Business sandbox test account, email, and password for sandbox onboarding. Do not create another account during the sandbox onboarding process.

Sandbox onboarding

To complete sandbox onboarding:

  1. Navigate to the PayPal Developer Account page.

  2. Click Log in to Dashboard and log in with your existing PayPal Developer Portal-generated Business sandbox test account or click Sign Up to create an account.

  3. Create a PayPal sandbox account:

    1. Go to Testing Tools > Sandbox Accounts.

    2. Click Create account.

      If you created an a PayPal sandbox account during the sandbox PayPal onboarding process, you must reset your onboarding sandbox because or you cannot verify your email.

    3. Select Business as the Account Type and click Create.

    4. In the Sandbox Accounts section, click the three dots in the Manage accounts column for the sandbox account you created.

    5. Click View/edit account.

      PayPal - View/edit sandbox account {width="300" modal="regular"}

    6. Copy and save the Email ID and System-Generated Password for future use.

  4. On the Admin sidebar, go to Sales > Payment Services.

  5. Click Sandbox onboarding.

    This option is visible if you have not yet completed sandbox onboarding for Payment Services.

    A sandbox merchant ID is auto-generated and populated into settings. Do not change or alter this ID.

    You are presented with a PayPal window for connecting a PayPal account to start accepting payments.

  6. Enter the email and password of the PayPal sandbox account you generated in step 3 (not your PayPal business account information) and your country or region.

  7. Click Next.

    PayPal - Connect PayPal account for payments {width="300" modal="regular"}

  8. Continue to follow the PayPal flow, using your previously saved sandbox account credentials.

  9. On the Admin sidebar, go to Sales > Payment Services.

    The Sandbox onboarding button is no longer visible and you see a “Sandbox payments pending” text.

When your PayPal sandbox onboarding is approved, you should see a notification stating that your payment system is currently in sandbox mode and is not processing live payments.

IMPORTANT
If you revoke consent to Payment Services for Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source for processing your payments (in your PayPal account settings), orders in your store cannot be processed by Payment Services. On your Payment Services home, an alert about the revoked consent appears. To dismiss the alert, click Do not show again.

Reset your sandbox account

If you created an a PayPal sandbox account during the sandbox PayPal onboarding process, you must reset your onboarding sandbox because or you cannot verify your email.

To reset your sandbox account:

  1. Click Reset sandbox. Create a PayPal business sandbox account.
  2. Click Sandbox onboarding and complete the next set of steps.

Enable contact telephone number

Contact telephone number allows you to obtain the contact telephone numbers that PayPal collects from your customers. PayPal always collects contact telephone numbers from PayPal account holders to help confirm their identities and to contact them to resolve problems on their accounts, or to complete their fulfillment processes. However, PayPal discourages the use of contact phone numbers directly from the merchant because it can negatively impact sales. See the PayPal get contact telephone numbers documentation for more information.

This feature is off by default. When you enable it, store administrators can see phone numbers when a customer completes a Branded Checkout flow outside of the checkout page.

IMPORTANT
This setting does not apply to other checkout flows.

Buyer’s country

In production, PayPal uses the buyer’s geolocation to determine which payment methods are available in checkout and express flows. Since sandbox mode does not support geolocation, use the Buyer’s country configuration to simulate the buyer’s location and control which payment methods are rendered.

This setting is useful for testing region-specific payment methods like Venmo (US only), Pay Later (US and UK), or Local Payment Methods (Europe) without needing a VPN.

To configure the Buyer’s country:

  1. On the Admin sidebar, navigate to Stores > Settings > Configuration.

  2. In the left panel, expand Sales and select Payment Methods.

  3. Expand the FEATURED ADOBE PAYMENT SOLUTION section.

  4. In the Payment Services section, expand the General Configuration section.

  5. Set Method to Sandbox.

  6. Select the desired country from the Buyer’s country dropdown.

  7. Click Save Config to save your changes.

NOTE
The Buyer’s country setting appears only when the method is set to Sandbox. This does not affect production environments.

Test in sandbox environment

It is highly recommended that you use testing dataspaces for integration and staging environments, and to test Payments in production, with real credit cards and banks, before exposing this functionality to shoppers.

See Test and validate for more information.

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