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My question relates to the use case of trying to build a simple payment flow where one user (a donor) can donate directly to another user (a recipient) with Bitcoin. To begin with, I would like to manually load up and input 2 addresses that respond to a Donate button and ideally get processed from test accounts on the Testnet blockchain.

I am new to bitcoin development and want to understand the underlying mechanics rather than immediately implementing a more sophisticated and abstracted plugin (e.g. Stripe). Additionally, my preferred language is Ruby so I have been favouring APIs with Ruby SDKs.

So far I have a shortlist of the following APIs:

Has anyone worked with these and can provide guidance on which is best to implement the above use case? Other suggestions welcome. Appreciate this could be interpreted fairly broadly but I can try and specify further if you have questions.

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In case anyone else faces this decision I decided to go with the Blockchain.info API (https://blockchain.info/).

Primary factors:

  • Easy to use ruby gem and interface - I was able to create wallets and transactions through invoking a few simple methods within my Sinatra app
  • Blockchain.info provide and utilise a stable wallet, recipient address which is easier and more intuitive to work with when starting out (e.g. easy to track senders and recipients against IDs)

Drawbacks:

  • I couldn't find a way to link in the Testnet blockchain so had to experiment with real Bitcoins
  • I was totally reliant on the Blockchain.info wallet and transaction structure. This was fine for a prototype/ experiment but for an actual MVP you would want to be able to integrate a wide range of wallet providers.
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Take a look at Coinkite's API https://coinkite.com/developers and also the payment buttons and payment processing options https://coinkite.com/faq/pay

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    You need to state your affiliation with CoinKite if you are going to post commercial messages like this. It may be a valid solution, but you are not being forthcoming regarding that you are an employee of that company.
    – Claris
    Commented Jul 7, 2015 at 20:51

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