Braintree Blog

Preceden's my work and if their design was based on mine, I don't mind at all. I tend to base my initial designs on sites that look aesthetically pleasing to me and then adjust it over time to be my own. The dark blue header, for example, was inspired by http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/. I'm sure they're doing something similar. Site looks great though--wish you guys the best.

Look into Braintree (http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/) They are known to have the best customer service and can deal with these types of issues better than the other solutions. However, it is slightly harder to set up an account with them as you have to meet certain requirements before starting an account (and literally talk with a representative). For example, new businesses with no credit history probably will find it very hard to get an account with them. That said, all these precautions probably lead to reduced risk and higher quality clients on average.

We use Braintree (http://braintreepaymentsolutions.com/) as our credit card gateway and merchant account. I can't say enough good things about them... they're one of the rare companies now that offers an excellent product and excellent service. (Although I sound like an advertisement, I get nothing from them for saying that. :) Our system interacts with their API when people sign up, and for recurring billing, we implemented a simple nightly process that also uses their API.

Check out http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/ They've been recommended by quite a few people around here.

Some of those companies are actually based on the new PayPal X. We used PayPal's Recurring Payments for http://www.placevine.com and it has been an absolute nightmare. Charges get declined for seemingly random reasons, the management console is riddled with bugs, and support has been useless. I highly recommend using Braintree (http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/). I've worked with them as the payment processor for http://www.parkwhiz.com for 3 years and they've been fantastic.

I recommend Braintree http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/, having build payment systems on top of paypal payflow pro, paypal express checkout, and Braintree. Their API is far more sane, and their vault system is convenient. Plus they'll let you get your data back out if you ever need to switch. Make sure to ask anyone who would be storing CCNs for you if they have a portability policy. Otherwise, you only get to choose once for the life of your company. Note: I haven't checked out spreedly yet, but I've heard similarly good things.

If you're doing it in Rails, I'd recommend the ActiveMerchant plugin and a gateway/merchant account from Braintree. That's what we use on our main Rails app (as opposed to PayPal on our other main subscription-based offering). It works great. The only hangup has been accepting international currencies (we're having to work with a different company for that). The transaction fees are low, too–which actually makes a difference when you start getting a lot of subscribers. http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/ http://www.activemerchant.org/ https://peepcode.com/products/activemerchant-pdf

these guys are great: http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/

We use Braintree (http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/), and I've never had a better experience with a service provider. They're consummately professional, know their product and category inside and out, and are eager to educate people on the ins and outs of credit card processing. I had heard at one point that they had a higher rate for services billing less than $1MM a year, but I've since heard that that doesn't apply to SaaS companies that are using Rails (I'm not sure what the definitive answer is on this; I know they were the best price we could find, and I looked extensively). For recurring billing, we use a Rails-based billing framework called Freemium (http://github.com/cainlevy/freemium/tree/master), and have been very happy with it. It integrates with Braintree flawlessly. Also, its primary developer is a freelancer (http://cainlevy.com/) who is available for hire, if you're looking for someone to help you get set up. We hired him, and couldn't be happier with his work. One thing to keep in mind when you're looking for a payment processor is this: How transparent are they with their costs? Do they complicate their fee structure with hidden costs? Credit card billing can be a really complex beast, and having a partner who's interested in helping you make sense of it is very valuable. That's what we found in Braintree. I'm sure there are others that are good, but I'm glad I haven't had to look for them, and that I've been able to just focus on building my…

I think that the University of Chicago is cultivating a great startup culture at Booth. The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship has some amazing resources: http://www.chicagobooth.edu/entrepreneurship/ The Booth School of Business has at least 6 Nobel Laureates as professors: http://www.chicagobooth.edu/ The New Venture Challenge (http://research.chicagobooth.edu/nvc/) has launched companies like http://grubhub.com, http://benchprep.com, http://bu.mp, http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/, http://www.prepme.com/, etc.

No, it's against the PCI guidelines to store the CVV number under any circumstances [1]. I'm not a PCI expert but as I understand it, if a merchant does store CVV numbers they can be fined for doing so. But that fine will be chicken feed compared to the costs Sony will incur if they are found to have leaked credit card details [2]. [1] http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/merchants-are-prohibited… [2] http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/pci-compliance-and-the-c… NB: I've got nothing to do with Braintree - but their blog is excellent

Another possible solution: http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/

if I had to guess I would say http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/

Since you added PayPal, you might as well throw Braintree in there. It's pretty great. I've been happy using it for an app I'm working on. Oh, and Mailchimp's API, too. I have a feeling that this list is going to go on and on. http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/gateway/api http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/

Will Braintree work for you? http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/

Braintree: http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/ Libraries out of the box for Ruby, Python, PHP, .NET, and Java: http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/gateway

I think braintree is a big one: http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/

They use http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/. Not sure how Brain Tree handles that thing.

This advice is hard earned. Great write up. We're on the opposite side of the spectrum as a company in that we're not well known, we're not well connected, we don't have outside capital, and we're not creating the next generation of search. We do, however, have similar goals of finding and retaining the best people, building an enduring and rewarding culture, and continuously exploring better ways to do things. We actually blogged today about what we've learned as a startup in trying to find the best people who are also the right cultural fit. http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/inside-braintree/recruiting-f…

Some Chargify alternatives: http://cheddargetter.com http://www.spreedly.com http://recurly.com http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com

SendGrid - sends emails with high deliverability http://sendgrid.com/ Braintree Payment Systems - charges credit cards http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/ Server Density - monitors our servers from the inside http://www.serverdensity.com/

At the moment I'm using Paypal. The documentation is insufficient and code samples (at least the Java one) are horrible, but it gives you the ability to accept credit card payments (without requiring the user to sign up for a Paypal account). Unfortunately that's not the case for Google Checkout, which requires a google account. My next step is Braintree http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/ Its API is much better, and it's more flexible than Paypal. It has some fixed costs, but nothing too bad if you are serious about your business.

http://www.zuora.com/ http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/ http://aws.amazon.com/fps/ previous HN thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=432284

I'd take a serious look at Braintree for credit card processing http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/. I'm not affiliated, we're a customer that uses them for processing. Reading stories like this, I'm glad we do. When we signed up they gave us a heads-up on almost every one of these facts (i.e. warning us up front to authorize a minimum of a dollar or many banks would reject it). They called AMEX on our behalf to get the service hooked up so we didn't have to. They've also given us tons of technical advice, like how to improve accuracy on AVS checks and details on what some of the esoteric failure codes really mean.

you are definitely not supposed to be storing cvv numbers, in plaintext or otherwise. according to pci, you're not supposed to be storing or processing credit card numbers on the same machine (or even network, i believe) as your public web server. if you are not sure how to handle this stuff, please, for the sake of your customers, use a company that does know how to do it. companies like braintree (http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/) have a secure vault service that lets you store credit card information on their servers which you then access on a per-charge basis using a token.

http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com They offer everything the big dogs do, but their staff is incredibly helpful and attentive. We use them on FamSpam and GitHub. I wouldn't find the merchant with the lowest rates, find the one you like the most. As your business grows, you can always renegotiate your rates.

Especially important for lean startups when considering payment providers for subscriptions is the ability to "take your customers with you" as you grow. When using Paypal, Clickbank, Fastspring/ Saasly, they are the merchant of record, so they "own" the customer data. If you ever want to move to a different provider, get your own or switch merchant accounts... the customers that signed up with these providers will need to signup for a new subscription and submit their CC data again to transition them to your new provider. The other option is you can continue to use these old providers for your existing subscribers, and use your new providers for new customers, but that adds a bunch of complexity for technology, customer support... This isn't a unique issue with "merchant of record" companies, gateways like Auth.net have a real issue with this too, check out: http://community.developer.authorize.net/t5/Integration-and-Testing/An… http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/open-letter-to-the-ceos-…

Braintree is great, the API, docs, and client libraries are all great. I'm using it for a subscription based product and couldn't be happier with the choice, even if the minimum fees are a little higher than most, if you aren't going to be able to cover a $75 minimum per month then you probably have bigger issues with your business plan than your payments provider. The fact that they give data portability is great and the "transparent redirect" is super convenient, knowing that i have practically nothing to worry about from the PCI DSS side of things. If I ever get to the point of needing it (which I may soon) it looks like they have the ability to manage multi-merchant accounts from the same system http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/services/multi-merchant Although I have heard great things about Stripe, really want to check that out soon. Also, after looking at the prices for Chargify or Recurly, it really doesn't seem to be that much of a value add for something that can be easily accomplished with the Braintree API.

Braintree: http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/

Hey thanks a lot for the feedback. On pricing: This is a real concern, so I hear you. We've considered the cost of data storage and are fairly confident in the model. In the unlikely event that 100 accounts use 10GB each, we'll be doing fine. A 1000 person company is also way out of our target demographic here, the app is purposefully not designed for that many users. What your comments on this subject say to me, at the core, is that we need to prioritize a full API so that one can easily take their data with them if an unfortunate situation like you describe ever arises. On no-credit-card-for-signup: This is a big one. We argued and debated about it for a long time. It comes down to the fact that while requiring a credit card in order to start a free trial is common, we just don't like it. Conversion is harder, to be sure, but we feel that letting people try the service without a credit card is a good way to encourage as many people as possible to actually try it. Also, there's a great discussion on this at http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/negative-option that heavily influenced our decision here. Appreciate the comment!