A worthy developer-friendly alternative to PayPal

Daniel picture Daniel · Apr 26, 2011 · Viewed 10.9k times · Source

I understand payments are a tricky thing, but I'm yet to find a worthy alternative to PayPal. I want to change from PayPal because I think they are expensive and it doesn't work in all countries. Furthermore, I think that the API is sufficient, but could be better. The API documentation, however, is total utter crap.

I am looking for a payment / transaction service that is more developer friendly, preferably with:

  • A clean and well-structured REST API
  • Excellent developer tools and a sandbox
  • Good example API implementations, preferably in Python or Ruby
  • Worldwide credit/debit card coverage
  • Rates cheaper than PayPal (or the possibility to choose a payment plan)

I suppose Google Checkout is somewhat worthy, but it requires both the developer and prospective purchasers to have a Google account. Any other suggestions are very much appreciated!

Answer

anurag picture anurag · Mar 30, 2012

Stripe fits a lot of your criteria — you can accept credit card payments without a merchant account. You also get to control the payment flow without having to worry about PCI compliance.

A clean and well-structured REST API

The API is based entirely on REST — you can even use curl to charge cards:

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/charges
   -u <YOUR_API_KEY>:
   -d amount=400
   -d currency=usd
   -d "description=Charge for [email protected]"
   -d "card[number]=4242424242424242"
   -d "card[exp_month]=12"
   -d "card[exp_year]=2012"
   -d "card[cvc]=123"

Excellent developer tools and a sandbox

You can test your payment form integration with test API keys before going live. More info: https://stripe.com/docs/testing

Good example API implementations, preferably in in Python or Ruby

Stripe has official libraries in Python, Ruby, PHP and Java, and there are more community-supported ones here: https://stripe.com/docs/libraries

Worldwide credit/debit card coverage

You can charge all international credit and debit cards with Stripe.

Rates cheaper than PayPal (or the possibility to chose a payment plan)

You pay one standard rate of 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. Unlike PayPal, there's no extra charge for American Express or international payments. Details here: https://stripe.com/help/pricing

I am an engineer at Stripe. Feel free to drop by our chatroom if you have more questions. You can also email us at [email protected].