Test credit card numbers for use with PayPal sandbox

Question

I'm having trouble testing credit card payments with PayPal's sandbox. When viewing a buyer's sandbox account's profile from within developer.paypal.com, I can see the following credit card details:

Although, when using these details on the payment screen, I get the message "We're sorry, we can't complete this payment. Please try another card."

I have read in other questions that you should be able to log into a sandbox account, go to add an additional credit card and it should generate some test numbers for you... However, when I do this, all of the fields are blank:

I have also tried using some "valid" numbers (i.e. they pass the Luhn algorithm), but none of those worked for me either.

I've also tried the numbers listed on this page: https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/vhelp/paypalmanager_help/credit_card_numbers.htm - They didn't work.

I've tried both US and UK accounts. No luck.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

A bit late in the game but just in case it helps anyone.

If you are testing using the Sandbox and on the payment page you want to test payments NOT using a PayPal account but using the "Pay with Debit or Credit Card option" (i.e. when a regular Joe/Jane, NOT PayPal users, want to buy your stuff) and want to save yourself some time: just go to a site like http://www.getcreditcardnumbers.com/ and get numbers from there. You can use any Expiry date (in the future) and any numeric CCV (123 works).

The "test credit card numbers" in the PayPal documentation are just another brick in their infuriating wall of convoluted stuff.

I got the url above from PayPal's tech support.

Tested using a simple Hosted button and IPN. Good luck.

Answer 2

In case anyone else comes across this in a search for an answer...

The test numbers listed in various places no longer work in the Sandbox. PayPal have the same checks in place now so that a card cannot be linked to more than one account.

Go here and get a number generated. Use any expiry date and CVV

https://ppmts.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/750/

It's worked every time for me so far...

Answer 3

If a credit card is already added to a PayPal account then it won't let you use that card to process directly with Payments Advanced. The system expects buyers to login to PayPal and just choose that credit card as their funding source if they want to pay with it.

As for testing on the sandbox, I've always used old, expired credit cards I have laying around and they seem to work fine for me.

You could always try the ones starting on page 87 of the PayFlow documentation, too. They should work.