Postman Guide

Use Postman to explore PayPal's REST APIs without a developer account. You can customize requests and receive responses for any of PayPal's core APIs.

You can test APIs right away by forking PayPal's Postman collection. To test an app from your Developer Dashboard, plug in the app's client_id and client_secret.

1. Fork the PayPal Postman collection

  1. Sign up or log in to an account on postman.com.
  2. Select the following Run in Postman button:

  3. Select Fork Collection.
  4. Name your fork and select a workspace.

2. Authenticate an app

Replace the default access token with a client_id and client_secret from an app on the Developer Dashboard.
  1. On the Developer Dashboard, find your client_id and client_secret under Dashboard > Apps & Credentials.
  2. In Postman, select your fork of the PayPal collection.
  3. Under the Variables tab, in the CURRENT VALUE column, enter your client_id and client_secret.
  4. Select Save.
A script generates and manages the access_token automatically. Use the access_token to call any API in the collection on behalf of your app.

3. Make API calls with Postman

This example uses the Orders API to create an order and capture payment using sandbox accounts linked to your Developer Dashboard account. To find your sandbox account credentials, log into the Developer Dashboard and select Sandbox > Accounts.

To create an order:

  1. In your Postman workspace, navigate to your fork of the PayPal collection.
  2. Select Orders > Create Order > Send. On a successful call, the API returns a 201 order created response code.
  3. Find the approve link in the response.
  4. Open the approve link in a browser.
  5. Log in with your Developer Dashboard sandbox personal account credentials.

Capture Payments

Capture payments in both your personal and business sandbox accounts as follows:

  1. Find the id in the response of the order you created and copy the value.
  2. Select your fork of the PayPal collection.
  3. In the Variables tab, enter the value you copied in the order_id field.
  4. Select Orders > Capture payment for order.
  5. Select Send. A successful call returns an HTTP 201 order created response code.