The development team behind the time tracking site freckle, have just released a PDF guide detailing the terminology and processes behind processing credit card details in Ruby.

Much like Amy Hoy's previous guides relating to Rails, the Jump Start Credit Card Processing guide is a very colorful guide and is split into three small parts that make it easy to digest. It gives an overview of the process and actions involved in processing credit card payments as well as explaining different methods that can be used to validate a credit card.  A 6 step example in Ruby using the Active Merchant gem shows you the basic steps required to process payments.

A set-up check list is also given, as well as explanations for the different types of bank accounts you'll need to have in place.  The guide also includes a link to a javascript credit card detection and validation library written by freckle member Thomas Fuchs.

This is a great place for developers to start who are looking to add processing payments to a project.  At only 15 pages the guide is short, but covers all the basic steps required to implement the processing of credit card payments using colorful illustrations.  Not content with version 1 of this guide, the freckle team have already started work on a second version of this guide.

Post by Matthew Lang - Matthew Lang is an ERP developer with a keen interest Ruby and Rails programming.