I am working on an application where users sign up for one of several
plans. Each plan has a different monthly fee. There is no long term
contract but I would like to bill the users automatically each month
unless service is canceled.
What credit card gateways would you recommend for use with a rails
application?
My criteria in order of importance are
- API that will let me work in ruby and rails with the gateway. I
don’t mind using a third party library like Active Merchant if the
gateway does not directly support ruby.
- I need the ability to bill monthly and automatically without keeping
credit card information on my servers.
- Cost. Low setup and monthly fees are very important as I will be
self funding this project until it gets off the ground. The cut the
gateway takes per transaction is also important but I am willing to give
a little there in exchange for kick-butt service.
Discussion of the perks and negatives of various gateways as well as
details about rails payment libraries would also be most helpful.
Thank you,
Matthew M.
blog.mattmargolis.net
Matthew,
We’ve used the Paypal Payment API with great success for automating
subscription payments. While it’s a bit of a downer that users have to
leave your server (they can stil use a credit card though) integrating
with PayPal is very easy with the PayPal gem.
It’s also, by far, the fastest to setup in terms of approval process
(there isn’t really one - just need a business account)…no gateway
providers and merchant accounts needed.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe authorize.net has
subscription functionality (it’s in the api, but I don’t think it is
functional).
You can see it in action here:
http://www.slingshothosting.com/
http://dist.leetsoft.com/api/paypal/
On 6/14/06, Matthew M. [email protected] wrote:
don’t mind using a third party library like Active Merchant if the
details about rails payment libraries would also be most helpful.
Thank you,
Matthew M.
blog.mattmargolis.net
Rails mailing list
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–
Derek H.
HighGroove Studios - http://www.highgroove.com
San Mateo, CA | Atlanta, GA
Keeping it Simple.
650.276.0908
Doesn’t Paypal make your customers approved the billing on each cycle
before
they get billed? At least that’s how they used to do it. Authorizenet
does
have recurring billing, but it’s not automated, you have to go into
their
web interface and create a billing profile manually. Verisign has
recurring
billing, as does Trust Commerce. I’m a developer for Payment Online and
we
have one of the better recurring billing systems IMO, just not the
cheapest.
If you need features like being able to lookup or update subscription
parameters via an api (for customer self management interfaces, multi
level
subscriptions, etc…), we are one of the only companies so far that has
that
ability. Well unless you go with someone like Sandlot, but that’s a
whole
different price range.
Also, IMO you should stay away from paypal or any other third party
billing
service for subscriptions. If you ever need to move to a different
provider, you won’t be able to take your customers with you and import
them
into the new system. That’s because with a third party billing service,
the
customer is legally theirs not yours and they are prohibited from giving
you
the card numbers.
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: “Derek H.” [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 2:53 PM
Subject: Re: [Rails] Which Payment Gateway?
Matthew,
Pretty much any payment gateway will let you work in ruby on rails. The
trick is writing the code to interface with the gateway.Most gateways
use some sort of http post to a url and then return a response which you
have to decode.
Take a look at the payment gem to get an idea of how this is done. It
should be pretty trivial from that to write an interface for any http
style payment gateway.
I’ve done extensions which work with netbilling and eprocessing.
Shawn
I am using paypal for my ecommerce, this one is most trusted payment system i have ever used.