Ask HN: How does your startup charge customer credit cards?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3135029

by llambda • 15 years ago

27 17 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm wondering what common solutions are used? Are startups rolling their own (is this even feasible, if so what's involved?) or maybe more commonly using some payment solution like Stripe?

there• 15 years ago

i use activemerchant in my rails app (http://corduroysite.com) that charges cards through braintree.

card information is stored in braintree's secure vault and monthly subscription charges are processed on my server using each customer's vault token. braintree got easier recurring billing since i implemented this, but it all works so i'm not about to change it.

jqueryin• 15 years ago

I have personal experience using a number of solutions for startups. I find the Recurly.JS solution to be one of the absolute easiest to get up and running without any actual programming. It's great for MVPs. http://js.recurly.com

* Chargify

* Recurly

* CheddarGetter

* Authorize.NET (and subsequently CyberSource)

In addition to what I've mentioned from personal experience, there's a couple of previous posts on this subject worth checking out:

* Poll: How do you bill recurring payments? - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2201363

* Ask HN: Recurring Billing Solutions - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438929

* Recurring Billing For Web Apps - http://thinkvitamin.com/dev/reoccurring-billing-for-web-apps...

hessenwolf• 15 years ago

Mmmmm... we use Paypal, anybody got any comments?

fezzl• 15 years ago

Great choice, especially for non-US startups. We've heard PayPal horror stories, but apart from their "evasive" customer service practices, they are so far so good.

malcolmong• 15 years ago

Braintree or Stripe

rjsamson• 15 years ago

We needed a solution for recurring payments and we chose Stripe, which has turned out to be awesome. If you haven't already looked at them, they have a really cool solution - http://www.stripe.com

torontos• 15 years ago

http://samurai.feefighters.com Doesn't have recurring billing built in (we didnt need it) but I think they might connect to chargify. We ended up choosing Samurai for the lower fees.

axefrog• 15 years ago

UK here. PayPal Website Payments Pro via Recurly. I rolled my own PayPal solution previously but bugs messing with recurring payments is way too much of a problem to work through if you can avoid it. Better to leave it to the experts.

d3x• 15 years ago

stripe

robflynn• 15 years ago

We use Stripe and they've been wonderful.

frankwiles• 15 years ago

Braintree's API is a dream to work with compared to all of the other payment processors I've ever used. I try to steer all of our clients in that direction whenever possible.

pauldi• 15 years ago

I integrated http://saasy.com/.

It seems a bit pricey compared to other options but they handle things like charge backs and locale specific tax. Whether that justifies the higher commission rate is debatable.

Some things I didn't like about it: (1) For new / low volume users there's a mandatory telephone number field. (2) Once the transaction is complete it's not possible to automatically redirect back to your site.

chetane07• 15 years ago

I use paypal, along with IPN (Instant Payment Notification) to automate delivery upon purchase.

dirkdeman• 15 years ago

Paypal with IPN integration.

LeBlanc• 15 years ago

In order to accept credit card information directly on your site, you need to be PCI compliant. This involves paperwork, and once you have significant volume, audits.

WePay provides a simple checkout API that you can embed on your own site via iframe. This way you can have the entire checkout process on your own site (unlike most PayPal APIs), but without dealing with the PCI nightmare. http://stage.wepay.com/developer

templaedhel• 15 years ago

You can also use stripe, which provides a JS solution where the client sends CC details to the stripe server, which is PCI compliment, and you receive a token you can use on your server. The CC numbers never touch your server.

there are some other javascript payment solutions I think, but the stripe one is the best I've seen.

bsenftner• 15 years ago

I use Drupal framework, and their Ubercart subsystem, and the Authorize.net gateway.

Ask HN: How does your startup charge customer credit cards?

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