My PayPal certificate expires tonight, and I can't get a certificate ID

[permutations]

I wrote my business site in custom PHP many years ago, before much was available in the way of commercial shopping carts. Every year I've updated the certificate, and all was well - until tonight!

I had received a notice that PayPal was updating to more stringent encryption, but I read it carefully and I appeared to be in compliance. I have continued to receive payments.

Then tonight I went to update my certificate as usual, and could not. The Web site was completely shifted around and the usual page was not there. I finally found the page for certificates, but none of the options were what I had been using.

I had been using PayPal Payments Standard Integration. I generated public and private certificates and used these to encrypt the payment buttons. I uploaded the public certificate to the PayPal Web site, and PayPal gave me a certificate ID that I put in my PHP file.

Now this entire method seems to have been disappeared without warning, and I don't know what to do. I can't find any page to upload a public certificate and receive a new certificate ID. Is it there and I'm just not seeing it? As of tonight, I'm no longer able to receive payments on my business site! PayPal customer service is closed - phone and chat - until Monday.

Please don't accuse me of lack of planning. I had no warning of an impending problem. I read every notice sent to me and made the changes I was told to make. This huge change was not among them. I always upload the new certificate on the last day. That has never caused a problem before.

Can someone please advise me? What are my current options?

Thank you.

[MTS_Carlos]

Hi @permutations,

The verbiage has changed with the user interface. The option that needs to be selected is NVP/SOAP API Integration (Classic) per your integration. You can also access the page by this direct URL: https://www.paypal.com/businessprofile/mytools/apiaccess/firstparty

Once there, you can remove your old API Certificate and then re-request. 

Please let me know if this is successful. 

Thanks,

Carlos

[permutations]

I selected that option, but the entire method is different. I've been using the original PayPal PHP script from the 1990s when I set up my e-commerce site. It's all hand-coded. That PHP script talks to the PayPal server - back and forth. Meanwhile, I have other PHP code that encrypts my buttons and uses a certificate ID that PayPal gives me - or gave me. My certificate ID expired and I can't get another one from PayPal. That page you directed me to is for a completely different method. It may be "classic" but it's "new classic". I spent HOURS researching this, and it's not the method I've been using.

Mysteriously, since getting the new certificate, my payments have been going through - though my certificate ID has expired, I can't get a new one, and I haven't touched my code. I suspect that I'm not the only one using the original PHP code, and not the only one who threatened legal action when PayPal cut off access with no notice. I don't know how long my old code will magically work, so I'm working on a new Web site that uses the new method.