#jarrett_prieview-invoice-payment-methods
cinder girderBOT
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opaque sierra
If you preview the invoice I think we should preview the payment method types as well. Can you try that in sandbox mode and let me know if it works for you? https://docs.stripe.com/api/invoices/create_preview
fair depot
can i preview a non subscription invoice?
opaque sierra
Yes definitely, can provide the same info on invoice items and such to that preview call
fair depot
oh let me give that a shot
cinder girderBOT
jarrett_prieview-invoice-payment-methods
fair depot
i'm looking at the preview invoice method and it doesn't have options for things like collection_method which I know would impact payment method options. how would this possibly work?
also, i just tried tihs and payment_method_types is nil when I tested it
left notch
Hello 👋
I'm stepping in as my colleague needs to go.
I think there is a more fundamental problem with this approach. When you create a one-off Preview Invoice it remains in draft status. At this point, since it has not finalized, the payment method types have not been finalized.
fair depot
the problem we're trying to solve is how do we show our users what payment methods are valid for an invoice
left notch
I'm testing a few approaches now
fair depot
the exact situation is we have team members that create invoices for customers. part of that process is selecting "Automatic" or specific payment methods. I don't know how to tell which ones are available though.
right now we have it all hardcoded to a fixed currency based list, but it's not the most ideal
left notch
Okay, I'm sorry to report that we don't appear to expose this at all until an Invoice is finalized. The only way I can think of to get this information would be to create a dummy Invoice and finalize it.
If you wanted to go that route I would recommend creating a Sandbox account specifically for this feature and replicate Customer and Price details there to ensure you get the same results. This is also a non-ideal situation.
I will be filing a feature request that we return the expected payment methods for each Invoice as part of the preview feature and a separate feature request that we include the collection_method parameter to get closer to parity with the Invoice API
fair depot
even an endpoint that helped expose payment methods by options or something. like currency, collection type, one off or subscription would be nice.
i feel like there are a million payment methods, and it's impossible to know what I can use with what. even from a documentation perspective. trying to find out what the ID name of paymetn methods is hard. like we have us_bank_account and customer_balance in our code and it's always a shit show trying to remember what is what
especially since customer_balance is actually Bank Transfer and us_bank_account is ACH Direct Debit, unless I've confused them again
left notch
Yeah the naming of bank transfers to customer_balance is a serious pain point
fair depot
someone should just rename it and make it backwards compatible with the old name. same for us_bank_account. call it ach_direct_debit
is there a docs page in the help center that just lists every payment method with all the information?
i've found scattered version, none of which include everything
left notch
Unfortunately "all the information" is a bit much for a single page.
fair depot
i can't even find a table with Name, API code name, Currency support, Subscription Support
fair depot
there should just be like a google sheet or something. like a gigantic ugly table
left notch
And unfortunately some of the currency support or susbcription support is "it depends"
Because some PMTs support different currencies based on where your account is located and support Subscriptions but only if your account meets certain requirements
The explanation of which requires it's own page
It does make herding cats seem simple by comparison
Our Overview doc is far too brief but gives you a central place to scan all options and choose where to dig deeper
fair depot
i think the problem i find is there is all these different pages, i can never remember where any of them are or which one "might" have the answer
left notch
That's a fair assessment
fair depot
and still no none of these do I know that ACH Direct Debit is us_bank_account
the only way you find that is by searching the docs for us_bank_account and you run into a page like this that happens to use it https://docs.stripe.com/changelog/clover/2026-01-28/financial-address-account-holder-information#whats-new
but even that doesn't help me find out that it's ACH Direct debit. i have to click on this page in search to find it under "Blocked Bank Accounts" and assume that it's the key. https://docs.stripe.com/payments/ach-direct-debit#blocked-bank-accounts
left notch
Yeah I agree. So, I have filed 2 separate feature requests for our Invoice Preview API to support the collection_method parameter and to return the anticipated payment method types in the payload.
Additionally I filed a suggestion with our docs team to create a large table of payment method types by category that include name, API code, merchant country, currencies supported, and whether recurring charges are supported. I suggested we include filters for currency, merchant country, and recurring charges. We can then link to additional docs for each Payment Method from that table. The idea is to allow you to filter to a list of paymemt method types that make sense for your business and use that to guide your research
I can't make any promises if/when any of these requests will result in actual changes but at least the requests have been made and the interest in these features has been logged.