Ask HN: how do you handle preorders (not charging CC until later)? Any gotchas?

2 pointspositivejam4 comments

I'm talking about getting the CC# weeks or months in advance and then actually processing payment when it's time to deliver. Also, does Stripe handle this sort of situation pretty well, or is there another payment processor that does it better?

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Stripe handles this really well. We've been using them to power the payments piece for trycelery.com. No big gotchas so far based on my experience. If you wait too long to charge, you may run into an expired credit card.

I'd say the most important thing is to clearly communicate shipping/fulfillment timing to your customers, so they know what to expect.

Cool, exactly what I was hoping to find out. Thanks for the insight!

Glad I could help. Feel free to shoot me an email (in my HN profile) if you have any specific questions.

PS: just checked out trycelery, too. Looks very cool! Since I've never run a site with preordering before, I'm not sure which features I'll need or not, but I plan to revisit your service when I get to that point in development.

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