#paul-durbin - Pre Auth
low wedge
Hi Paul. Give me a moment to catch up here
By pre-auth, what exactly are you doing? Are you using setupintents?
small yarrow
By pre-auth, what exactly are you doing? Are you using setupintents?
Hello, and thank you for coming back to me so quickly!
So we're using the Ruby integration and yes, we are indeed using a PaymentIntent to create the pre-authorisation - is that what you mean?
small yarrow
So I'm wondering if that is indeed the best approach as (and please correct if I'm wrong here) we can only capture up-to the total amount of the PaymentIntent. So on the occasions where the customer requires additional products / services after we're authorised the card, are we best to create subsequent intents or is there another approach which would be better suited?
Ideally we don't want to expose ourselves by delivering a service or product without having adequate checks to verify the customer has available funds 🙂
low wedge
Gotcha
So the other thing you could do is preauth for more than you expect to capture
Otherwise multiple PaymentIntents, like you're doing, will work
pure path
With an auth for more than you expect to charge @small yarrow you can specify the final payment amount_to_capture when you capture the payment: https://stripe.com/docs/api/payment_intents/capture#capture_payment_intent-amount_to_capture
So if you want to avoid an additional auth/payment, you should inform your users that you'll auth for a larger amount but only collect the actual amount
(they will see the initial auth, so its good practice to set expectation there)
small yarrow
Correct, so we did consider that, however with initial trials we had a little pushback for "Why have you authorised for more than we've agreed" so we assumed that the multiple intents was the way forward.
I was curious how the patrol station example I gave worked - I assume that the industry is fairly standard when it comes to card processing, so they methods they employ could be utilised by us?
We did consider pre-authorising for an amount, saving the card within Stripe and then charging the full amount afterwards, however there's no guarantee the card wouldn't be declined.
pure path
Correct
You'll want to make sure you have auths before fulfilling goods/services
Some techniques for auth amounts are only supported by the banks/card networks for certain merchant types (eg gas stations, restaurants) so it's not true that a general payment flow used one place will be available to your business in another industry
If you believe you operate in an industry where overcapture is allowed, you should reach out to our support team to determine whether that is supportable for your account
If you're not, then your options are over-auth and capture less, or separate payments