Hi
I’m about to setup an online shop that will require payment processing.
I want to know what success people on this ruby forum have had with
payment processing sites/options? what software do you use and how is it
done? Does it require something extra special? i.e. special hosting
that supports SSL?
Thanks
Chris
Chris wrote:
Hi
I’m about to setup an online shop that will require payment processing.I want to know what success people on this ruby forum have had with
payment processing sites/options? what software do you use and how is it
done? Does it require something extra special? i.e. special hosting
that supports SSL?Thanks
Chris
I’ve used the paypal plugin quite successfullly. Image-wise, its
arguably not quite as professional as having your own shopping cart
however its quick and easy to setup, they have a sandbox for testing
against and it works. The payment pages on paypal are SSL’d already so
you don’t actully need to have any SSL yourself. No specific hosting
requirements either.
The only downsides I can see are image and fees. I think paypal charge
around 4%. I don’t know how this compares.
Personally speaking, I like paying for things with paypal as I don’t
have to keep entering my address and credit card details on every site I
visit. I’m not sure if others share that view…
hth…
I have used TrustCommerce (http://www.trustcommerce.com/) and have
been happy with them. They have a Ruby API that you compile and use
to send the CC info from your app to their processing servers.
Yes, you will want an SSL certificate for your web server so that the
CC info is encrypted from the customer to you.
–
Building an e-commerce site with Rails?
http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/rails-ecommerce
Thanks for the response
Yes, you will want an SSL certificate for your web server so that the
CC info is encrypted from the customer to you.
How do you get an SSL certificate? is it a simple process? Do the
hosting providers have to get involved?
Thanks
Chris
On 24 Aug 2006, at 14:27, Cayce B. wrote:
authorize.net. I have not used it, I chose instead to write my own for
the general experience - though I’m usually not a big fan of
“reinventing the wheel” in this case I really wanted to get an
insider’s
view to how it all works. It has not been altogether difficult - Ruby
and RoR sure make life easy - though I have concerns about how well
I am
handling error processing, as I am a long-time developer but
relatively
new to Ruby and Rails.
I have used Authorize.net and similar providers in Europe several
times, and the RYO approach is pretty simple, enough so that I’d
recommend it over a separate solution unless you have well tested
that solution and your needs are sufficiently complex. The caveat is
that I have only done this with WebObjects, not Rails, but I don’t
anticipate any problems in a Rails implementation.
Paul
Based on your questions I strongly suggest that you look for a book on
e-commerce or something that will explain the basic concepts of how
these
things are generally put together.
It sounds like this isn’t something you’ve done before and there are a
lot
of parts you need to get right.
It depends a lot on what you are after, and it boils down to a tradeoff
among parameters of cost, image and convenience.
As noted above, a paypal solution is easy to implement, but has a higher
cost and potentially some image issues. I’d give paypal a C for cost, a
C for image and an A for convenience.
If you want to be able to process credit cards directly, you will need a
merchant account with a processor, and an account with a processing
gateway like Authorize.net or many others. There is a higher cost to set
all this up, but in general a lower ongoing cost per transaction -
prolly like <= 2% + .15-.20 for the processor and .10 for the gateway.
Within credit card processing, there are also several options, depending
on your gateway. You may choose to write your own shopping cart and
submit the data to the gateway via its published API. In this situation,
you have some coding to do, after you read the API specs from the
gateway, of course, and yes you will need an SSL certificate. Don’t let
that scare you, they are relatively inexpensive ($100 - $200 for
something suitable to light commerce) and easy to install, and in all
likelihood your hosting provider will be able to take care of it for you
and just bill you. I’d give this an A or a B on cost, depending on how
good a deal you can get on setup fees, an A for image, and a C for
convenience.
Many gateways also provide a much simpler interface to processing
whereby when it’s time to pay you just redirect your customers to a
hosted checkout process on the gateway’s servers. You set up your
account so that once the payment side of the transaction is complete,
they redirect back to your site. There are also a ton of intermediate
payment processors out there that provide similar services. In this
method you would not need the SSL cert, as all the data transmissions
happen between the customer and the gateway’s servers. I’d give this
method a B on cost, B on image and B+ on convenience.
There is a ruby “payment” module out there on ruby forge that works with
authorize.net. I have not used it, I chose instead to write my own for
the general experience - though I’m usually not a big fan of
“reinventing the wheel” in this case I really wanted to get an insider’s
view to how it all works. It has not been altogether difficult - Ruby
and RoR sure make life easy - though I have concerns about how well I am
handling error processing, as I am a long-time developer but relatively
new to Ruby and Rails.
Anyway - I’m in the middle of all this and wanted to throw what I know
out there - hope this helps a bit.
c.
Chris wrote:
Hi
I’m about to setup an online shop that will require payment processing.I want to know what success people on this ruby forum have had with
payment processing sites/options? what software do you use and how is it
done? Does it require something extra special? i.e. special hosting
that supports SSL?Thanks
Chris
I suggest that you do some searching - this has been covered countless
times.
Sounds like you need to do some other base research though if you’re not
aware of how payment processing works or even the basic requirements.
There
is a pretty stringent security requirement depending on how you
implement
it. Make sure you understand the implications of your design on the
security
side of things or you’ll eventually get hacked and then everyone will be
very, very sad.
On your last question, I wouldn’t EVER consider allowing a user to
submit
credit card data on a non SSL connection.
Your communication with the payment gateway does need to be encrypted
also
but that’s a gateway specific thing.
Good luck.
How do you get an SSL certificate? is it a simple process? Do the
hosting providers have to get involved?
Godaddy has great rates for ssl certs, under $20.00. The certificate
can be generated using openssl. Installing it requires administrative
access to the webserver. Some hosting companies let you do it
yourself, some don’t, just depends how they have things setup.
I’ve used Authorize.net and Verisgn’s Payflow Pro both with Rails.
Authorize.net is easier to use but Verisign works.
I’m probably going to use TrustCommerce on my next project.
Substruct, the first and only released Rails open source shopping cart
(sorry had to plug it 
- http://dev.subimage.com/projects/substruct)
uses
the Payment gem, which hooks into Authorize.net.
Although I’ve been looking for better alternatives that support things
like
recurring billing. Might just add that myself, who knows.
Regards…
On 8/24/06, HH [email protected] wrote:
Based on your questions I strongly suggest that you look for a book on
e-commerce or something that will explain the basic concepts of how these
things are generally put together.
benjamin curtis’ book, The Money Train could be a good start:
http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/book
cheers,
jean-pierre
Im just implementing an active merchant processor
Im probably going to write a processor for payment too
As long as you have good documentation from the processor or a perl
Business::Online Payment processor module, It should be fairly easy to
make
your own.
Payment is essentially the same as perl’s Business::OnlinePayment
it seems active merchant doesn’t support cheques , at least there is no
support yet
I would like to see this all DRY’d up , that is active merchant using
payment and all the code that is
I personally seem to see too many plugins ,engines , regular ruby
libraries
and whatever that all do the same thing
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of subimage
interactive
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 12:44 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Rails] Re: What are people using for payment processing?
Substruct, the first and only released Rails open source shopping cart
(sorry had to plug it - http://dev.subimage.com/projects/substruct)
uses
the Payment gem, which hooks into Authorize.net.
Although I’ve been looking for better alternatives that support things
like
recurring billing. Might just add that myself, who knows.
Regards…
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