# \[Announcement\] Billing Module for your SaaS web application is here: ServiceMerchant

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/announcement-billing-module-for-your-saas-web-application-is-here-servicemerchant/151084>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [October 16, 2008, 4:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/announcement-billing-module-for-your-saas-web-application-is-here-servicemerchant/151084 "2008-10-16T16:37:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Alex\_Lebedev](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/cab0a1/32.png) [@Alex\_Lebedev](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Alex_Lebedev)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2008, 4:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/announcement-billing-module-for-your-saas-web-application-is-here-servicemerchant/151084/1 "2008-10-16T16:37:28Z")

</div>

[Announcement] Billing Module for your SaaS web application is here:  
ServiceMerchant

== In two sentences

ServiceMerchant is open-source library, developed in Ruby, which takes  
care of recurring billings and subscriptions of your SaaS  
application.  
The library sits on top of well known library ActiveMerchant and  
therefore gives you the variety of choice among payment providers.

== In more details

ServiceMerchant consists of number of well-defined reusable  
components, and may be used either as entire library or in chunks.

The components include:

- Wrapper around ActiveMerchant to unify RecurringBillingAPI across  
implementations of various payment providers
- Tracker (or local storage) of subscriptions which were sent to  
payment provider of choice, with the synchronization of renewals (with  
CSV import for those providers who do not allow API for pulling such  
information)
- Tariffication component allows you to configure your service plans  
in number of ways, covering most of SaaS application. We also track  
taxes, should you need it.
- sample UI implementation (webpages) so that user can view his  
billing profile, admin (back-office) pages to get the insight of  
failing and successful subscription statistics.

The library does not store the credit card PANs in local storage  
(relying to payment service provider), which simplifies your PCI-  
compliance a lot.  
At the moment, the wrapper around ActiveMerchant only supports mapping  
to [Authorize.net](http://Authorize.net) and PayPal, but other supported by ActiveMerchant  
gateways are mapped in minutes.

== Project status

This is the first public appearance of the library. This is version  
0.1 of it. The library is provided as is. Though the unit tests  
coverage is quite comprehensive, we advise that you apply your own QA  
before going live. We will be happy to receive any issues and include  
it into the development roadmap.

Also in roadmap:

- create the component of real-time consumption information (at the  
moment, the functions allow to check the quality and quantity of  
service the specific user is subscribed to, but no information how  
much was already used and what is remaining)
- online registration component (for new users and invites under  
corporate accounts)

== Resources

[http://servicemerchant.org](http://servicemerchant.org) – project website

[http://gothub.com/itteco/service\_merchant](http://gothub.com/itteco/service_merchant) – source codes on github