Merchant account / gateway for a Rails app?

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Evan Dorn

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Jun 18, 2010, 8:14:25 PM6/18/10
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Anyone have experience picking out a merchant account and gateway to use with an e-commerce app?   

I've got a shopping cart built (with ActiveMerchant) ready to sell another project of mine (a desktop app written in Java).   I built the cart myself so I could integrate it with the licensing and version checking database to support the app.  

Anyway, all I need is a merchant account and an ActiveMerchant-compatible gateway.   But that's been hell on wheels - dealing with merchant account providers feels like handling a barrel full of greased rabid weasels.   Of the first five I talked to, I've caught three of them outright lying about their own fee schedules - the "errors" were caught when I reviewed the fine print on their applications.

Basically all I want is:
• A merch acct with ActiveMerchant-compatible gateway**
• No early-termination fee / contract lock-in
• Simplicity in setup 

I prioritize the above three bullets above "the lowest prices in the industry", since that phrase universally seems to correlate with obfuscated/sneaky fee schedules.   Reasonable prices that are well-documented and clear are preferred, frankly.

Thanks,
Evan

** Preferably Authorize.net just because I've worked with their developer test instance before.   Preferably not PayPal because I don't want to deal with supporting their annoying two-methods-of-payment structure and I'd rather not have the client leaving my site.

Evan Dorn, Ph.D.
Owner and Lead Developer
Logical Reality Design






Greg Pederson

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Jun 18, 2010, 10:32:25 PM6/18/10
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Check into Costco's credit card processing account.  Last time I checked if you have a Executive Membership with Costco you can get discounts on the credit card processing account fees....enough to pay for the executive membership fee.

If that's not an option check out http://transfs.com/ to help you find a credit card processor.

Best of luck,
Greg

 
Greg Pederson
Founder and Technical Director
407.385.0098 office
888.308.9695 toll free
www.NsightDevelopment.com



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Robby Russell

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Jun 22, 2010, 1:22:44 PM6/22/10
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Evan,

We've had good success with the following:

* Braintree
* Authorize.net

...and have used ActiveMerchant with each of them.

Cheers,
Robby


gustin

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Jun 23, 2010, 4:34:32 PM6/23/10
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Braintree +1000

We've dealt with a dozen payment processors, Braintree all the way.

Great platform. Their new blue platform is designed for ruby from the
ground up.
Great service, friendly and responsive.

Did I mention they cater specifically to ruby development?

~)o
gustin

On Jun 22, 1:22 pm, Robby Russell <ro...@planetargon.com> wrote:
> Evan,
>
> We've had good success with the following:
>
> * Braintree
> * Authorize.net
>
> ...and have used ActiveMerchant with each of them.
>
> Cheers,
> Robby
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Evan Dorn <pub...@idahoev.com> wrote:
> > Anyone have experience picking out a merchant account and gateway to use
> > with an e-commerce app?
>
> > I've got a shopping cart built (with ActiveMerchant) ready to sell another
> > project of mine (a desktop app written in Java).   I built the cart myself
> > so I could integrate it with the licensing and version checking database to
> > support the app.
>
> > Anyway, all I need is a merchant account and an ActiveMerchant-compatible
> > gateway.   But that's been hell on wheels - dealing with merchant account
> > providers feels like handling a barrel full of greased rabid weasels.   Of
> > the first five I talked to, I've caught *three* of them outright lying
> > rails-busines...@googlegroups.com<rails-business%2Bunsubscribe@go oglegroups.com>
> > .

Philip Hallstrom

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Jun 23, 2010, 4:37:58 PM6/23/10
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I've never used them, but inquired with them once and their sales guy asked *me* if we were using Ruby. That has to be a good sign :)

> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rails-busines...@googlegroups.com.

Troy Davis

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Jun 24, 2010, 1:17:22 PM6/24/10
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On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 1:34 PM, gustin <gus...@entryway.net> wrote:
Did I mention they cater specifically to ruby development?

I'd also add that they are legitimately innovative:
http://www.portabilitystandard.org/ (vaulted card portability among providers)

Almost nobody else in their industry thinks like that.  We've also been thrilled with Braintree's service, after using 2 other gateways and having hands-on experience with a couple more. 
 
Troy

-- 
Cloudvox  --  Asterisk hosting + phone call/SMS API
http://cloudvox.com/  --  @troyd

Dave Stevenson

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Jun 28, 2010, 6:40:02 PM6/28/10
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We've been using Braintree for the last 2 1/2 years for our rails
site. Very clean and not once have we had a problem. I've also done
an authorize.net implementation and it was fine for one-time payments.
But Braintree's vault product is great for storing CC numbers for our
subscription based service.

Dave

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Robby Russell

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Jul 2, 2010, 11:05:50 AM7/2/10
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My braintree review from a few years ago.

Mike Pence

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Jul 2, 2010, 1:27:55 PM7/2/10
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tl;dr braintree good

Donald Ball

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Jun 24, 2010, 1:28:34 PM6/24/10
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On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 1:17 PM, Troy Davis <tr...@yort.com> wrote:

> http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/gateway/transparent-redirect
> (cleanest PCI avoidance solution I've seen)

Has anyone gone through PCI DSS validation compliance with a QSA that
signed off on this tactic? It seems sound to me, but my opinion is not
the one that counts.

- donald

Brian Guthrie

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Jun 21, 2010, 2:47:06 PM6/21/10
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Hi Evan,

Take it with a grain of salt--I don't run an e-commerce site and can't
personally speak to their services--but I hear very good things about
Braintree (http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/). It's a Rails
shop, the CTO is a friend and former colleague of mine at ThoughtWorks
(and several of their senior developers are likewise) and they seem
like a pretty standup bunch--certainly I trust their technical talent.
And I can assure you that if they were to ever act dishonestly then
those selfsame technical folks would want to be the very first ones to
know and act on it.

Cheers,

Brian

Evan Dorn

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Jul 4, 2010, 1:21:39 PM7/4/10
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I just wanted to thank everyone for the advice. For this project, I ended up picking the Costco/Elavon solution.

Braintree looks great and I'll investigate it for future projects, but their monthly minimum is pretty high and this particular project is expected to be very low volume at first.

Thanks!
Evan

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