Recently, I built a feature in a Rails web application to take payments for an annual subscription service. There are many options for accepting credit card payments available. I was encouraged by a colleague to consider using Stripe.

A day later, I was happy I did. Able to accept payments in a PCI compliant way, the feature was quite a pleasure to build.

I found these resources particularly helpful:

• https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/charges
• https://github.com/stripe/stripe-ruby
• https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com/blog/life-of-a-stripe-charge

A rundown of how it works.

• Use a basic html form and add data-stripe=attributes for Credit Card, Expiration Month and Year, and CVC number
• Use jQuery to handle the form submission instead of the browser's default form handling
• In the browser, use Stripe.js to generate a one-time use token from the 4 credit card fields (the library provides methods for it)
• Send the one-time use token from the browser to your Server. I used jQuery's $.ajax function
• From your Server, send the token to Stripe using stripe-ruby .gem, and create either a Customer or a Charge
• A Customer object will have an ID that you can store and re-bill at a later date