Open Payment Host

Open Payment Host is a self-hosted, Minimalist payments host through which we can easily sell our digital items without paying double commissions while having total control over our sales and data.

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Inspiration

Selling digital items on web as an indie requires using platforms where we have to pay double commissions(to the platform and the payment gateway) and our content is forever locked within those platforms.

What it does

Open Payment Host is an easy to run self-hosted, minimalist payments host through which we can easily sell our digital items without paying double commissions while having total control over our sales and data.

How I built it

Open Payment Host is a minimalist, yet performant Go web application. I designed it from the ground to be an isolated containerized application.

The design choices include but not limited to using Sqlite3 for database, Instead of an external database server. Using Go templates with Tailwind CSS for UI instead of JavaScript front-end frameworks.

Challenges I ran into

There were two main challenges,

  1. Since Open Payment Host is a payments application, Security is paramount; Ensuring that there are no known security vulnerabilities was a concern.
  2. The image size of the OPH was 710 MB (uncompressed), The size needed to be reduced to enable fast deployments.

I used slim.ai to address those challenges, Slim.ai provides various tools such as Overview, File Explorer, Vulnerability Scanners to analyze the docker image for security threats.

Slim.ai's harden tool compressed the Open Payment Host image by 91.2% (62 MB) and reduced the attack surfaces further in the process.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I was able to build a secure, production ready payments host within the stipulated period of the hackathon.

What I learned

Securing, Compressing, Hardening a container image can be done within few minutes on slim.ai platform by just following their automated workflow.

What's next for Open Payment Host

Getting it to those who need it and adding more features through their feedback.

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