[skennedy]

Why would you open yourself up to that level of liability? Full PCI compliance is a standard that will be used by businesses to determine if your product is a viable solution. If your solution breaks PCI compliance at any point, you open yourself up to big problems when (not if) something goes wrong.

Also, why reinvent the wheel? PayPal and Google Checkout are major vendors with PCI certifications who handle the entire transaction process. Why not use them to handle all the risk? You get a transaction id and collect your money through them. Never touching the sensitive financial information.

[pantsd]

Given that he is asking about recurly, chargify, etc. I'm assuming its because he wants to do reoccurring billing, for which PayPal/Google Checkout are less than awesome solutions for.

[skennedy]

I have not had any problems implementing/using PayPal recurring payments. What specific "less than awesome" functionality are you referring to and how are the other products better? Not challenging you, just looking for a more rounded picture.

[dacort]

I found their documentation absolutely horrendous. Try googling for "recurring paypal" and you get a page that links to a (stated) 682K PDF published in 2006 that in actuality is only 2 pages and includes a link to yet another 300 page PDF.

[skennedy]

Documentation that overwhelms a new developer does not make a product less in functionality or quality. Googling code examples, explanations, and blogs of PayPal recurring payment code/functionality, I found a lot of very useful information during my own development. The functionality and product have been around a while and lots of people who want to help others adopt it.