PayPal Payments Pro Sandbox requires membership?

Question

Do I need to pay the $30 just to play around in the sandbox for Website Payments Pro? I'm trying to get Active Merchant working in Rails, and it's giving me an error "invalid merchant configuration"... after digging around a bit it says I need to "accept the billing agreement" and/or sign up for the Payments Pro first. So, do I need to pay the $30 just to test in sandbox? Or is there another workaround for this error?

Answer 1

It's also possible to create a preconfigured Website Payments Pro account in PayPal Sandbox.

After you log in to https://developer.paypal.com/ , go to Test Accounts , click Preconfigured next to New test account . On Account Type , choose Website Payments Pro , fill in the rests of the form, and submit it.

Answer 2

You can create a Payments Pro account in the sandbox. Basically, login to the developer site, then create a preconfigured test account of type "Website Payments Pro". You'll have to put in some other fake info (it's sandbox, it's not for real) per the section on creating preconfigured accounts , but it will solve the "invalid merchant configuration" if you're coming across that problem.