Separate billing app recommended for non-subscription based system?

[Jatinder Singh]

Hi,

In the past I have built custom recurring billing system as part of a
separate rails app which talks to the main application using Active
Resource.

I am now working on an application which involves one-time credit card
processing whenever customer buys a product, no complications. We need
to store the credit card information so that we can help out the
returning customers with data they have already entered. Authorize.net
CIM seems to be the right fit for us as we have good experience with
Authoirize.net and have our setup already done with them.

Now the question is whether to have the billing logic(i.e.
storing/retrieving customer info on/form CIM) as part of our main
application, or as a separate app. what are the downfalls of each case
considering customer data is stored on CIM?

Your help is appreciated.

Thanks
Jatinder

[Benjamin Curtis]

I have a one-off purchase option in Catch the Best, and I just keep the reference to the CC stored with Braintree in the main app.  I also do recurring billing in that app, so it made sense to keep it all together.  In reality, there isn't a whole lot of code there, and it's only a little more data to store in your app database, so it makes sense to me to keep things simple in just one application.

If you go with the two application approach, you might find the monkeycharger project interesting.

--
Benjamin Curtis
http://railskits.com/ - Ready-made Rails code
http://catchthebest.com/ - Team-powered recruiting
http://www.bencurtis.com/ - Personal blog

[Jatinder Singh]

Thanks Benjamin.

Simplicity by keeping it all together in one application with cc#
stored remotely is what I was looking forward to.

monkeycharger is an amazing component which can be used off-the-shelf
for secure credit card processing.

Thanks Again.
Jatinder

[Cody Fauser]

With Monkeycharger you still need to manage the deployment and
availability of another application. Monkeycharger also stores the
credit card numbers encrypted in its database. This means you have
more components to worry about in regards to complexity and PCI
compliance. Unless you really need that added flexibility then you're
probably better off to use a service like Braintree, Authorize.net
CIM, or TrustCommerce Vault.

--
Cody Fauser
http://shopify.com - e-commerce done right
http://www.codyfauser.com - blog
http://peepcode.com/products/activemerchant-pdf - ActiveMerchant PeepCode
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/rjsrails - RJS Templates for Rails

[fgwenger]

Billing Orchard is another service that you can hook into the
authorize.net ARB (recurring billing) nicely. It has an easy API and
also something called Checkout Pages which you can use so you don't
have to worry about PCI compliance. It allows customers manage their
own account.

- http://BillingOrchard.com/default.cfm?pid=a2de1a17

HTH