How to sign up for PayPal Express Checkout

Sue — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:25:05 +0000

This is a bit off-topic: it's nothing to do with WordPress, but building various ecommerce sites, I've lost track of the number of times I've had this conversation:
Me: ... and if you want PayPal Express Checkout, I'm going to need you to sign up for their API ...
Client: No problem. Where do I do that?
Me: Umm. I've forgotten. Let's both spend a couple of hours trying to find it...

Because if you search PayPal's site for "express checkout", it doesn't find anything, and if you can ever find all the documentation, it *still* doesn't tell you how to get the API username, password and signature you need for most ecommerce apps.

So for the sake of my sanity, here is where to find the information you'll need.

Sign into your PayPal account.
Click "Profile" from the top.
Under the "Account Info" list of links, click "API access"
Under "Option 2", click "View API Certificate"
On the next page, select "Request API signature" and click the "Agree and submit" button.
Your API username, password and signature are on the next page

Why PayPal can't link this from the documentation, I'll never know, but hopefully that's saved a few people a few hours' hunting.

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How to sign up for PayPal Express Checkout