Experience with billing systems

  • Braintree (and to some extent, other lesser payment gateways)
    • Pros
      • You're in complete control of the billing system
      • You can do more complex payment setups
      • Widely supported for multiple programming languages; ActiveMerchant support
      • Some of the best support you'll ever see for e-commerce
    • Cons
      • You probably have to deal with PCI DSS security compliance
      • Potentially a lot of extra work (which may very well still be worth it)
  • Google Checkout
    • Transaction Fee: 2.9% + $0.30
    • Pros
      • Very low transaction processing fees
      • Fantastic if you're already using Google for advertising
      • Google handles a lot of the messy stuff involved in billing, like chargebacks
      • There's now support for subscriptions (in beta though)
    • Cons
      • Google's API is different enough from other systems that you usually have to use a library specifically designed for Checkout (e.g., no ActiveMerchant support)
  • Paypal
    • Transaction Fee: 2.9% + $0.30
    • Pros
      • Widely understood API; tons of stuff available for dealing with it
      • Essentially supported by everything
    • Cons
      • Lots of people are very vocal about not wanting to do business through PayPal due to bad experiences
    • Neutral
      • Tends to be popular with the young adult demographic who don't have credit cards and with eBay users
  • Amazon FPS
    • Transaction Fee: 2.9% + $0.30, lower for bank accounts and balance transfers
    • Pros
      • Probably your best bet for micro-transactions
      • A good choice for payments for physical goods
    • Cons
      • I don't know enough about the system to say for sure