# Simplest way to accept credit card transactions? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [October 24, 2006, 4:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simplest-way-to-accept-credit-card-transactions/73415 "2006-10-24T16:19:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![random52k](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/7bcc69/32.png) [@random52k](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/random52k)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2006, 4:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simplest-way-to-accept-credit-card-transactions/73415/1 "2006-10-24T16:19:08Z")
Just looking for some recommendations for the simplest way to handle online credit card purchases with a merchant account. From searching through some of the previous list messages, it looks like [trustcommerce.com](http://trustcommerce.com) and [authorize.net](http://authorize.net) come highly recommended, so I’m just trying to figure out which one will be the easiest to integrate with rails… Cost isn’t much of an issue, but time is, so the faster/easier something is to implement and get working, the better (I’ve got a tight deadline). > From what I can tell, trustcommerce has a ruby library > ([http://www.trustcommerce.com/tclink.php](http://www.trustcommerce.com/tclink.php)) to interface with their API, > while [authorize.net](http://authorize.net) does not (however, it looks like there are third > party libraries such as ActiveMerchant or Ruby Payment which will > handle the integration)… I’m just wondering if anyone has had any > experience with either of these libraries or the trustcommerce ruby > integration and can recommend one over the other. Also, does it make it any easier to use a merchant account provided by the payment processing gateway company, rather than a separate non-related merchant account provider? Thanks, Mike ---
**Author:** ![random52k](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/7bcc69/32.png) [@random52k](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/random52k)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2006, 7:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simplest-way-to-accept-credit-card-transactions/73415/2 "2006-10-24T19:42:40Z")
On 10/24/06, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > From what I can tell, trustcommerce has a ruby library > > Thanks, > > Mike > > > Mike, I recently launched a rails app that uses TrustCommerce as the payment gateway to handle monthly subscription billing. They have a nice feature called Citadel that handles storing a customer profile and monthly billing so you don’t have to store credit card info in you db. Being CISP-compliant is not easy 🙂 I haven’t been a customer for long but am very happy with TC so far. TC can offer you a merchant account through a partner. We chose to use BofA. It shouldn’t matter if you use a merchant account provided by the payment processing gateway company or a separate merchant account provider. The TC ruby API is very robust in my experience. You can also integrate using straight HTTPS posts. I wrote a rails plugin to handle the TC Citadel integration. Check it out if you’d like an example of using the TC API. The plugin uses the ruby extension if available, otherwise it falls back and uses HTTPS. The plugin svn repo is here: [http://svn.depixelate.com/plugins/trustcommerce\_subscription/](http://svn.depixelate.com/plugins/trustcommerce_subscription/) I blogged about it here: [http://www.depixelate.com/2006/10/20/trustcommerce-subscription-plugin-released](http://www.depixelate.com/2006/10/20/trustcommerce-subscription-plugin-released) Hope this helps, Zack ---
**Author:** ![random52k](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/7bcc69/32.png) [@random52k](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/random52k)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2006, 8:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simplest-way-to-accept-credit-card-transactions/73415/3 "2006-10-24T20:09:01Z")
Thanks for the info Zack, right now I’m leaning more towards Trustcommerce unless anyone else has reasons for why I should check out [authorize.net](http://authorize.net) instead… Thanks for the link to your plugin, I’ll definitely check it out. Mike ---
**Author:** ![random52k](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/7bcc69/32.png) [@random52k](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/random52k)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2006, 9:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simplest-way-to-accept-credit-card-transactions/73415/4 "2006-10-24T21:05:25Z")
I would say at least check out all of your most appropriate options. I have used [authorize.net](http://authorize.net) for quite sometime, and while I do not know much (hardly anything at all) about trustcommerce, I have been quite pleased with [authorize.net](http://authorize.net). Really it all comes down to service, if they can connect to your preferred payment processor, features, and fees. My 2 cents. Will ---
**Author:** ![random52k](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/7bcc69/32.png) [@random52k](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/random52k)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2006, 10:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simplest-way-to-accept-credit-card-transactions/73415/5 "2006-10-24T22:28:09Z")
How easy was it to get everything up and running with [authorize.net](http://authorize.net)? Which plugin did you use, the Payment plugin, or Active Merchant? And do they take care of storing the credit card info on their servers? I’m not sure if I’ll have a need for this, since I’m not going to be doing subscriptions… But even so, if a user buys a product and then returns to the site, ideally I’d like them to be able to purchase more items without requiring them to re-renter their credit card number, in which case I guess it would have to be stored externally… Thanks, Mike