PayPal SetExpressCheckout fails on live server

Question

When I make SetExpressCheckout API call against PayPal live server I receive following error: "You are not signed up to accept payment for digitally delivered goods."

The error indicates quite clearly that I should enable digital goods option from my business PayPal account. I found out that it should be possible to enable "Digital Goods with Express Checkout" on the My Business Setup page. However when I choose the option "Change" -> "Add new" I'm taken to page where the available options are displayed and when I choose "Digital Goods" I'm just taken back to My Business Setup page without any notifications and no visible changes. It seems that adding Digital Goods as an option is not working. What I noticed there was the text "Requires Sign-up" only in this Digital Goods item, which could be the missing part but I don't know what it actually means or where I should Sign-Up.

Anyone has any ideas how to solve this "You are not signed up to accept payment for digitally delivered goods." problem when using Express Checkout API?

Answer 1

I had this same issue when I took our update from NVP to SOAP live earlier this year.

Despite what their support/docs say, the option to enable digital downloads via PayPal's web interface has been broken for some time as you noted (was still broken as of May 28, 2014, almost 9 months after your question). I was not satisfied to remove the "Digital" tag from the API call, so I gave their tech support line a call.

After the support person agreed that the web interface was broken, they manually enabled digital goods for my merchant account from their end. They said they also finally logged the issue with the interface in their tracker, but if you still have issues with "Digital" just give them a call and they will activate it for you.

Answer 2

The solution was to not to use Digital tag in the SetExpressCheckout API call.