Why did I get the error "We were unable to decrypt the Certificate ID"?
PayPal can't decrypt the Certificate ID.
Cause
You added spaces or carriage returns within the encrypted string of a Website Payments Standard button. If you encrypt buttons through the Encrypted Website Payments (EWP) feature, possible issues may include:
- The auto-formatting issue may affect the buttons.
- The public certificate used in creating the encryption may need uploading.
- The Certificate ID specified may not match the one in the PayPal account.
Solution
If you use the PayPal Button Factory to create an encrypted button, copy the HTML code from the Add your button code to your webpage screen and paste it into a Notepad document. Copy this code from Notepad and paste it to your webpage. If possible, turn off the auto-format feature on your web development tool, or remove any formatting for this segment of code.
You can prevent this error by hosting the button on PayPal. When creating a button through the PayPal Button Factory, check Save button in PayPal in Step 2 on the Create PayPal payment button screen.
The PayPal website home page offers more information on Encrypted Website Payments.