Question about payment gateways (particuarly Stripe)

[LMD]

I have never used Stripe before, but I am wondering if it what I need for a client...

Does Stripe allow sellers to charge the buyer's card when items are shipped (which could be several days/a week later) instead of immediately when an order is placed?

I am not talking about invoicing. As far as the buyer is concerned the process is a regular shopping cart experience, except their card won't be charged immediately.

If it doesn't, is there any UK available payment gateway that does? This is for a small-scale business with <£300 per month of online sales (they are mostly a "bricks and mortar" store).

I'm asking in the PW forum, because if it does, I'll be looking to use Padloper as the shopping cart.

Right now my client is locked into Woocommerce and a discontinued CC (PCI compliant!) payment processor.

[dynweb]

1 hour ago, LMD said:

Does Stripe allow sellers to charge the buyer's card when items are shipped (which could be several days/a week later) instead of immediately when an order is placed?

You can choose on your implementation if you want to charge the user's card immediately ("capture") or only reserve the funds for later capturing (via Stripe admin or API).

The only problem is that it doesn't make much of a difference to the user (Stripe event advises that many users won't see a difference on their CC statement between "reserved" and "captured" amounts). Even if an amount is "only" reserved, the client can no longer dispose of these funds.

[szabesz]

1 hour ago, dynweb said:

"captured" amounts

Capturing the amount is about manually trying to prevent fraudulent transactions, because by not finalising the whole transaction in one go, the shop owner can intervene and decline the payment. This way there is no need to do a full refund later on, which is costly. On the other hand, a person manually checking each transaction takes time, which is also costly...

2 hours ago, LMD said:

a regular shopping cart experience, except their card won't be charged immediately.

You can probably learn more here:

https://stripe.com/payments/payment-methods-guide

2.1 For e-commerce and marketplaces
Recommended: Cards, wallets, bank redirects, "buy now, pay later"

[LMD]

Thanks, that page doesn't quite answer my question, although it leads to pages that might, so I have a lot of reading to do.

My main concern is that it must be really easy for my client -- they are definitely not tech savvy, so if a process is remotely tricky (e.g., just setting up an account in the first place), it's just not going to work.  They have used PayPal in the past and did not like it!