Implementing our billing system in rails: Paypal, pure Merchant Account / Gateway, or something like Chargify?

Question

I've seen a few questions related to API specifics and paypal. Generally speaking if I'm going to offer my rails app as a subscription based service, what are the pros and cons of the different payment systems available on rails?

My main concerns are:

• Avoiding PCI compliance, and not storing any credit cards on our servers
• Easy API with recurring payments
• Looking professional (not showing someone paypal branding anywhere as an example)

Paypal seems to have some "PRO" services that meet the above criteria, but I was curious about using a gateway like Authorize.NET directly?

What does Braintree offer above and beyond these?

What about Charify? It seems to be a layer on-top of gateways like Authorize.net with added dashboards and reports.

If the gateway or payment processor is storing credit cards for me, what happens if I want to take my 10,000 customers with me to a new billing service? Do they all have to enter payment info all over again? Is there a procedure in place so that different providers can move my customer / Credit Card database between them?

Answer 1

We've used Chargify and it's great for a couple of reasons:

• PCI compliance: Chargify handles the storing of the credit card
• Auto Charging: Will auto charge the credit cards after N months and a trial period
• Dunning: Will email users if the charge fails, and try several times before expiring their account
• Great Gems: the chargify gem rocks.

So I highly recommend using Chargify with Authorize.net

Cons:

• Chargify adds about $0.10 to each account per month in addition to your merchant fees

Answer 2

I recommend this write-up which will clear up many of these questions.