#KianBrose - Checkout URL
visual lake
tulip shale
Got it
I haven't tested generating this url on a "live" product, but I am assuming the length would be nearly identical to some degree. The method where I store the URL in a database and then send a "shortened" unique link to my own domain like pay.mydomain.com/userID would work, but I think I would lose a lot of trust since people don't necessarly trust me more than stripe which is why I feel like I'm missing something
frail talon
Hi 👋 jumping in for my teammate as things are bit busy currently.
tulip shale
Got it, thank you for your time and attention
I understand the pain of doing "customer support" as I do it as well 11 hours a day
frail talon
Haha, always awesome chatting with someone else in the field!
frail talon
Off the top of my head, I'm not aware of any pre-built functionality to shorten the Checkout Session URLs, but let me double check and make sure I'm not missing anything.
tulip shale
Got it, thanks
Apologies for my "special needs", I guess pretty much nobody ever sends payment links through text messaging, it's just something that's required for my specific company as things happen really fast (ticket and booking industry)
frail talon
Gotcha, do you need granular control on each transaction that requires you to use Checkout Sessions (I can imagine that prices change quickly in that environment)? I'm asking because if not, then Payment Links seem to come with shorter URLs than Checkout Sessions out-of-the-box, but Payment Links is a one-link for everyone approach.
tulip shale
Basically here's the situation
I run a booking service where I book tickets for people and "get paid for it later"
The thing is, I have the power to de-book a ticket I booked
So the way I want to operate is, I book a ticket and once that's done, send the way to pay to the customer so that I don't debook the ticket
So I need a way to really quickly send a payment link straight to a customer so that they can pay in a very short notice. While doing this I also need to "identify" who paid what
For the checkout session I see that there's a client_reference_id which looks to be exactly what I need
I think that overall this is exactly what I need, the only problem being the obscenely long url which would multiply costs massively due to the SMS api costs charging me based on 160 character segments (The url itself is basically 3 segments (2.21, but if basically charges me as 3))
0 -> 160 chars Segment 1
160 -> 320 chars Segment 2
320+ -> MMS (multi media message sent as network data, usually used for images, very expensive in terms of api costs)
frail talon
Gotcha, yeah, it does sound like Checkout Sessions are the better fit there, and unfortunately I'm not finding anything that we have prebuilt for shortening those URLs.
tulip shale
I mean I get the fact that it's for security reasons so that "no one url is alike", but it feels a bit excessive no?
I'm sure if you shortened it by like 25 characters you would probably save massively in term of network traffic going in and out of api calls due to it being unnecessarily long
Even 10 length randomized az-AZ-01 urls have like a quadrillion combinations anyways
Though that's just my "feedback" (as someone who tries to optimize network related things in my company as much as humanly possible to work with high traffic on budget servers)
Also, how fast does the webhook usually "react" to a charge being complete? Are we talking milliseconds, 10 seconds, a minute
I work with stripe through woocommerce webhooks and sometimes it can take up to 2 minutes to actually go from Stripe -> Woocommerce -> Webhook
frail talon
Yeah, there is a lot that is packed into our session urls.
For Webhook events they usually operate on a magnitude of seconds.
Instead of generating a checkout session and then sending the link via text, would it fit your flow to send your customers a link to your page (probably with some sort of param for identification) and then have that page generate/redirect them to a checkout session?
tulip shale
Yeah, that's what I mentioned with
I can think of a "spaghetti solution" where I store this link in a database, send a link to my own domain like pay.mydomain.com/userID which then redirects to the obscenely long checkout url
But like, if I look at it from a customer's perspective, a link like
pay.my_domain_from_a_small_ish_company.com/12hweoi
would probably look like something that steals credit cards, aka a phishing site
It's not that I "can't do it", it's more like uncomfortable for the customer if you get what I mean
frail talon
Gotcha
tulip shale
Like if you wanted to buy something on let's say amazon and you were routed to pay.techcompany.com/1237 that's a red flag
craggy sapphire
Note: you can buy a "similar" domain to use as a shortenr - my jewelry business, norosesjewelry.com, uses noro.es/~mumble~ as a url shortener.
tulip shale
I mean yeah I understand
If there's no "build in solution" I'll go for that then
Ah, one last "off topic question"
when the link "expires", is there a way to renew it without generating a new one?
frail talon
No, in those scenarios it's the underlying session that is expiring, and those can't be restored once that happens. However, there is an after_expiration.recovery.url field that can be used to create a new session that mirrors the expired one:
https://stripe.com/docs/api/checkout/sessions/object#checkout_session_object-after_expiration-recovery-expires_at
And this talks about the possible recovery options in more detail:
https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout/abandoned-carts
frail talon
Any time!
tulip shale
btw
if i can ask an unusual question seeing how you've done customer support for a while, got any fun story about a "special" person you've had to deal with?
frail talon
Hm, none come to mind that I'd be comfortable posting in a public forum. If we ever bump into each other in the real world, I'm sure we could have a fun chat. 😄
tulip shale
Ah got it xD
Indeed
I've always said, if I ever have to be stuck with someone in a room for an extended period of time I want it to be with someone that has years in experience in Customer support, an emergency line operator (911), policeman or firefighter
Because of boy do we have stories to tell 😂
frail talon
Oohh emergency responders are good choices too! Dang, I bet they have some crazy stories.