🚀 PayPal Developer Days Recap
It was an awesome experience attending PayPal Developer Days last week. There’s something energizing about being around people building the future — the ideas, the hallway chats, and the ambitious demos all point to one thing: agentic workflows are here.
I was fortunate to be invited, and I’m incredibly thankful to the PayPal team. From SMB Ads to Fastlane guest checkout, the breadth of innovation was impressive. But if there’s one key takeaway I want to spotlight, it’s this:
PayPal Agentic Toolkit + MCP
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is emerging as a foundational building block for agent-based systems. One of the VCs at a round table said this:
“Technology adoption follows this path: Consumer → Enterprise → SMB.”
While consumer use cases dominate headlines, enterprise adoption is rapidly accelerating. Just in the past week, several leading companies launched their own MCP servers:
The pace of adoption is staggering — and it’s only just begun.
Insider info: It took just 2 weeks for the PayPal Engineering team to develop and launch their MCP server. What’s stopping you?
If you’re a product manager, add MCP to your backlog. Start experimenting. Build a proof-of-concept. It's the kind of shift you’ll want to be early on.
🧰 Walkthrough: PayPal’s Agentic Toolkit in Action
Let’s walk through a hands-on example using PayPal’s MCP Server, designed to simplify finance operations via intelligent agents.
🧾 Use Case
As an Accounts Receivable Analyst, I want to:
Create invoices
Check invoice status
Visualize invoices by status
⚙️ Setup Steps
Postman (optional)
🔐 Step 1: Get Access Token
Log in to PayPal Developer
Create a sandbox app and retrieve your Client ID and Client Secret
Use cURL or Postman to generate your
access_token:
🧠 Step 2: Configure Claude Desktop
Launch Claude Desktop
Navigate to
Settings > DeveloperClick Edit Config and update
claude_desktop_config.json:
{
"mcpServers": {
"paypal": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"@paypal/mcp",
"--tools=all"
],
"env": {
"PAYPAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "<access_token_goes_here>",
"PAYPAL_ENVIRONMENT": "SANDBOX"
}
}
}
}You are all set.
🔄 Step 3: Restart and Prompt
Close and reopen Claude Desktop. It should now be MCP-enabled with PayPal’s tools.
You can now interact naturally:
“List my paypal invoices”
“Create an invoice for a new vendor Bool Data for 5000 Euros”
“Visualize all invoices by status”
Resources
Final Thoughts
We’re entering a new era where agent-based interaction is the UX, and tools like MCP are setting the standard. Whether you're working in finance, ops, support, or product — the ability to prototype intelligent workflows just got way easier.
We’re witnessing a fundamental shift in the enterprise stack — from static APIs and dashboards to agentic systems that reason, act, and adapt. This isn’t just automation; it’s a new interface paradigm where agents handle both intent and execution — changing how enterprise software is built, integrated, and experienced.
Would love to hear how you’re exploring MCP or any agentic frameworks. Drop your thoughts or questions below!