We were unable to decrypt the certificate id

Paypal payment buttons not working?

The error We were unable to decrypt the certificate id has become quite common recently.  Most commonly it's a result of a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor such as FCKEditor or TinyMCE.  Basically, you obtain the button code for your Paypal Buy It Now or Subscription or other similar button to place in your webpage.  If you were copying and pasting this into raw HTML it would most likely work fine.  The problem with the WYSIWYG editors is that they, by default, when the page is processed, insert certain code elements.  For example, in the case of FCKEditor, a linebreak (<br />) element was inserted towards the end of the button code.

WYSIWYG Editors Changing Your Paypal Button Code

To resolve this, examine your button code by viewing the source code of your webpage, and compare it to the original code in Paypal.  If you notice anything different, particularly if there's a linebreak (<br />) or newline ("\n") element inserted, this is most likely causing the we were unable to decrypt the certificate id error.

Solution to Get Your Paypal Button Working Again

To get your Paypal button working again, try:

• Turning off your WYSIWIG editor while you insert the code and save the page (or simply disabling the editor for that particular page)
• Editing the source code (FCKEditor, for example, offers a "view source" button to users with that privilege) and backspacing content so it occurs side-by-side, and not on a separate line.  The editor may parse the new line by inserting a line break element (<br />), which will disrupt the button code. 

When you save the page and view its source compare the button code to the Paypal original button code again.  If they're the same, you should not be getting the above error anymore.