Reauthorizing credit cards after they expire

[brimccarthy]

hey community, looking for some help:  I used  the Pre-order Manager app to take orders prior to my product arriving. IT worked great.  They pre-authed the orders but of course, did not collect funds. Now a month later my product is here but the credit card authorizations have expired. I'm wondering what the best practices for reauthorizing and charging the cards are when I ship next week.

Any good ideas?

[Olivia]

Hi, @brimccarthy.

Olivia here from the Shopify Team. I'd be glad to lend you a hand today.

Let's talk more about credit card authorization periods to better understand next steps. All credit card payment providers have an authorization period to allow a charge to be made to a customer's credit card. The authorization period varies depending on the credit card payment provider.

With that being said, when using Shopify Payments that authorization period is 7 days. If the allotted time passes and the payment is not captured, the authorization becomes invalid and the customer must provide their consent again. The only way for customers to provide that consent is by agreeing to the purchase and providing their payment details once more.

The Customer Journey

Let's prevent this from happening again! Now that you are aware of the expiring authorization period, make sure that your business operations reflect this and you include payment capture in your workflow.

Next Steps

Payment details are encrypted for your customer's protection, but also to safeguard your business. As such, you cannot access payment details or re-authorize credit cards on behalf of your customers.

What you can do is create a draft order and email your customers an invoice and explain the situation. In my experience, customers are always understanding of this, but you can even leverage this contact opportunity to connect with them. Maybe even offering a discount code for their inconvenience towards future purchases, or sharing your BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday) weekend sale? This is a great way to build brand loyalty and increase customer retention.

If you have any further questions or comments, don't hesitate to reply to my post!

Warm regards,

[brimccarthy]

Hey there, Olivia. Thank you for the detailed response. So just one follow
up question. You state, "The only way for customers to provide that consent
is by agreeing to the purchase and providing their payment details once
more.". My question is, what is the best practice there? Maybe just writing
to them, explaining the situation and requesting that they order again?
Maybe offer a discount? Does Shopify have the ability to repopulate the
order info so it is easier for them? Is there a button from the admin that
makes all this easier?

thanks!

[Olivia]

Thanks for getting back to me, @brimccarthy.

Yes, the best way to ask for payment again from your customers would be through the draft order option I shared above. This way you can easily populate what was in their original order, and then simply email them an invoice to create the least work for your customer.

After hitting "Send Invoice" from the draft order you'll be able to add a custom message as such:

This should do the trick, but let me know if you run into any further issues.

Warm regards,

[rtucker14624]

I agree with Brimccarthy! This is another example of having to use another "wonky" Shopify workaround for an issue that was not experienced on other platforms. I wish they would re-evaluate this. Shopify locks us into Shopify pay by adding an extra 2% onto other payment processors. I don't see their advantage to such a short authorization period. Do I want to pay an extra 2% above another processors fees, or do I want to switch to another platform? These workarounds are adding up.

[stouchetteTG]

Why doesn't Shopify work with a provider (or build it out) that does proper tokenization so that a card can be reauthed and/or reauth/captured? It pretty rough their rates are not anything amazon, but they dint you another 1/2 percent to integration your own provider. And even then who knows if you can reauth/capture without doing your own dev. There are some parts that are great, but others that are just an old outdated clunky experience that really misses the mark for real sellers trying to push it to the limits without customizing everything. We do a silly amount of preorder to where I an so close to seeing if we can bring in another payment provider and figure out how to do it.

[Olivia]

Thank you for your feedback, @stouchetteTG.

We appreciate hearing from business owners with different needs to better our services. I can definitely understand your use-case and why this would be important for you.

I would also like to further clarify that the authorization period is pre-set by the credit card payment provider. This means that different payment providers will have different authorization periods. Based on my research this period can last anywhere from one to 31 days, but it's best to check with the payment provider for their guidelines.

With that being said, re-authorizing a credit card is a bit different as it would require gaining the customer's consent again. This is an important part of the customer's safety, as well as online security and cannot be overridden. 

Perhaps a better solution for your needs is to work with a pre-order app to manage your business. There are several apps that offer services such as partial payment, or even full payment at the time of order. 

Here are some suggestions:

1. Advanced PreOrder
2. Deposits, Payments & Pre-Order
3. Pre-Order Helper

I hope that helps, but let us know if you have further questions.

Warm regards,

[stouchette]

How would PreOrder apps help? They won't reauth+capture which is the root of the issue. My previous platform (Demandware+Auth.net and later Braintree) all allowed us to reauth+capture without "customer re-concent". We had concent when the order was originally placed. Their system was aware how much the auth was for and that it expired. So it would let us reauth+capture up to that amount at anytime after since it was using tokens and used the same token that was connected to the transaction. So by copying to make a draft order and send an invoice would generally create an entirely new transaction, token, and yes consent. I would suggest Shopify review what the other providers offer and look to offer something similar unless that has totally gone away in the marketplace. We do a ton of PreOrder sales and this is a huge PITA. Would love to see some advancements in this space. Especially since the supply chain is so screwed up, many shipments are later than 7-30 days normal auth windows, and customers love to PreOrder to confirm they will get one whenever they get in.

[TDOTYELLER]

What if you manually capture the card and reauthorize it on another payment providor? Or wish to use Square?  They have lower rates.

[rtucker14624]

Shopify adds another 2% on top of Square, or whatever you would use. We came over from another platform where this was never an issue. If credit cards give up to 31 day authorization limit then why cant Shopify honor that? 

Also, I don't understand this "Draft Order" workaround when if we click on the Collect Payment button on an "expired" order we have the ability to enter the credit card info. A quick call to the customer can get that. There is also a Send Invoice button. Doesn't this ask for their info as well? Still a PIA as stated above.

[CNJane]

We also sell on the Houzz platform and it's a non-issue there.  If the authorization expires prior to your being ready to ship the item, it just puts up a new 'Charge Card' option on the order page  so you can re-charge the card when ready.  Easy-peasy, no hassle, customer is probably not even aware of what happened.  Having to contact the customer to get them to agree to the re-charge causes unnecessary angst and suspicion from the customer and headaches for the merchant.

[rtucker14624]

And lost sales due to customer suspicion. Speaking from experience.