Ask HN: easiest way to charge credit cards on website?

2 points·zxcvvcxz··7 comments

My friend has built a physical product he wants to try selling, and is creating a basic mock-up website. However he has no idea how to charge credit cards for pre-orders.

What is the easiest way he could drag-and-drop code into his site to integrate this functionality?

Hopefully responses will be useful for others as well. Cheers.

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Stripe [1] seems to be a favorite around here. I don't know much about their competitors and a quick search of the archives didn't turn up the flamewars I remember seeing, but I do know a lot of the Stripe team and I can vouch that they're all top-notch.

[1] https://stripe.com/

You need a shopping cart and a merchant account/gateway. The credit card stuff is relatively easy copy/paste code. Authorize.net and Paypal have historically worked pretty well.

Though try to avoid storing or handling credit cards yourself to sleep better at night. Braintree is another gateway to look at.

Try Balanced Payments - it's just as easy as Stripe BUT built perfect for Marketplaces. https://www.balancedpayments.com Escrow Distributed Payments Webhooks ACH Debit Overnight Bank Transfers and more.

After paypal-frustrated customer complained - I quickly crafted Stripe payment form on my website like this:

http://hostrum.com/payments/?for=John+Smith

This works like a charm.

I looked into Stripe's API a while back for a project. It can't be easier. Give it a try.

Stripe is pretty slick and very easy to setup.

Gumroad (www.gumroad.com) is super easy.

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