From small-business support company Grasshopper comes Chargify, a billing and subscription system for web 2.0 and SaaS companies that eliminates the need to build bespoke applications.

Their RESTful API and hosted payment solution permit simple integration into any website, allowing businesses to charge customers on a recurring basis, manage subscriptions, achieve PCI compliance, and gain real-time business intelligence from their billing.

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In addition to processing one-time and recurring transactions, Chargify handles free trial periods, promotions, refunds, receipts, and reminders.

Also, their pay-as-you-grow pricing seems ideal for small businesses and startups. The first 50 customers are free and range up to $1,500 for 15,000 customers or $2,500 for an unlimited number of customers. Chargify does not charge individual transaction fees.

Take a look at this demo video from the Chargify team:

The API accepts method calls via HTTP and returns responses as JSON or XML, allowing companies to keep the customer purchase flow on their own sites and authenticate users while passing the billing information to Chargify for processing.

Interested parties can sign up for the service, still in beta, at the Chargify website.

Now, it goes without saying that Chargify is far from the first billing software for small- and medium-sized businesses; competitors such as FreshBooks are fast becoming well-known heavy hitters in the space. We also found a couple billing services that offer an API – the Dutch MoneyBird, and two English-language services, Zuora and Vindicia. What – if anything – makes Chargify truly competitive in this increasingly crowded space?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments – especially if you have experience with using any of these online billing services!

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This morning, Google announced two enhancements to their OpenID API. For end users, they have rolled out a popup-style interface for simpler logins with fewer redirects and less confusion. They also extended their Attribute Exchange to include more user data, such as first and last names, preferred language, country, and other, more personal information available via the Google Data API.

At the OpenID blog, David Recordon wrote this morning, “This means that Google users signing into sites… now have a much better user experience, one on par with Facebook Connect.” The screenshots below show the new login in action.

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According to this morning’s entry from Yariv Adan on the Google Code Blog, the new UI “is designed to streamline the federated login experience for users. Specifically, it’s designed to ensure that the context of the Relying Party website is always available and visible, even in the extreme case where a confused user closes the Google approval window.”

The post continues with a specific use case. OpenID products company JanRain is using the new API in their RPX offering. The first step on the login page “is identical to that of the ‘full page’ version, and does not require any changes in the Relying Party UI,” read the blog.”

In addition to signing into sites using their Google accounts, users are also sharing specific data with the Relying Party website. The data shared can range from the user’s email, first and last name, preferred language, and country, to other information available through the Google Data API, including the user’s Contacts List, Web Albums, or Calendar.

Adan writes, “Google strongly believes that the data our users trust us with belongs to them and should always be available for them to use. By providing users with more secure means to share their data, they can benefit from a much more streamlined, personalized and socially relevant experience when they log in to trusted websites.”

The new process also allows a streamlined conversion process for Relying Party websites.

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