# activemerchant/active_merchant

Active Merchant is a simple payment abstraction library extracted from Shopify. The aim of the project is to feel natural to Ruby users and to abstract as many parts as possible away from the user to offer a consistent interface across all supported gateways.

Repository: https://github.com/activemerchant/active_merchant
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/active_merchant
Homepage: http://activemerchant.org
Language: Ruby
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2025-11-04T12:57:54+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 45/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 50, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 6679, "days_push": 302, "days_rel": 548, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 1}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4600, forks 2484 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:54.829202+00:00)

## What it is
Active Merchant is a Ruby payment abstraction library extracted from Shopify that provides a unified API across dozens of payment gateways. It integrates seamlessly with Ruby on Rails but also works as a standalone Ruby library for processing credit card transactions.

## Use cases
- process credit card payments in a Ruby app
- unify multiple payment gateways behind one API
- add billing to a Rails application
- charge customers via different payment processors
- validate credit card details before charging
- authorize and capture payments programmatically

## When to choose
- you're building a Ruby or Rails application that handles financial transactions
- you need to support multiple payment gateways with a consistent interface
- you want a battle-tested library in production use since 2006
- you need credit card validation and payment abstraction without vendor lock-in

## When to avoid
- your project is not in Ruby
- you need a full e-commerce platform rather than a payment library
- you only use a single gateway and prefer its native SDK
- you need non-card payment methods like wallets or bank transfers not covered by supported gateways

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: sdk, api-framework, security
- domain: fintech, e-commerce, web-development, backend
- platform: ruby, jvm
- tags: payments, payment-gateway, credit-card-processing, rails, billing, abstraction-layer

## Member repositories
- activemerchant/active_merchant (main) score 45

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:54.829202+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:19:47.405052+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/activemerchant/active_merchant (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:54.829202+00:00, sha 760ebdda88ef)
  - homepage: http://activemerchant.org (fetched 2026-08-29T09:04:50.060234+00:00, sha 82154a0e915d)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.