Sandbox & Test Numbers
Use a Sandbox SMS Billing Payment Profile to try SMS Billing end to end with your own phone, without charging anyone. Payment requests made with a sandbox profile's application key go through the same pages, texts, statuses and postbacks as live ones, but the charge is simulated and no phone bill is charged.
- Instead of our short code, you text one of the test numbers below, and our texts come to you from it. The test number decides what happens.
- On a phone, enter your own mobile number on the payment page and pick a test number, then reply AGREE to the text you get from it.
- On a computer, text the code word shown on the payment page to a test number.
- Postbacks include
"environment": "SANDBOX". - Sandbox payments appear in your transactions marked Sandbox, and never on statements. They don't count towards your phone's daily limit or its live subscriptions, and STOP sent to a test number only cancels sandbox subscriptions.
When you're ready to go live, switch to a Live SMS Billing Payment Profile's application key. Nothing else changes.
Test numbers
| Number | What happens |
|---|---|
| 07378 775154 | Paid |
| 07378 775130 | The network declines the charge: charge_rejected |
| 07378 775126 | The charge fails: charge_failed |
| 07378 775119 | The confirmation text can't be delivered: opt_in_undelivered |
| 07378 775046 | No result from the network: fails with no_result after 2 minutes, then completes about a minute later |
| 07378 775026 | Sky: paid by premium texts |
| 07378 775023 | Sky: out of credit, nothing taken: fails straight away |
| 07378 775019 | Sky: partly taken, the rest goes through on retry. Use £20 or more. |
| 07378 774993 | Sky: partly taken, the retries run out and it fails. Use £20 or more. |
| 07378 774958 | Subscription: the first payment works, every renewal fails |
Timings
So you don't have to wait days, sandbox payments run on a faster clock.
| Live | Sandbox | |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription renewal | The product's renewal period | Every 5 minutes (or the product's period in minutes, if set) |
| Failed renewal retried | Daily for 60 days | Every renewal period, for 15 minutes |
| Sky texts retried after running out of credit | Daily for 30 days | Every minute, for 5 minutes |
| No result from the network | Failed after 72 hours | Failed after 2 minutes |