Charging late/damage/non-returns fee for rental business

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment

Topic summary

A rental business owner seeks a way to automatically charge late fees, damage fees, or non-return penalties against held card details without collecting an upfront deposit. The challenge is that Shopify’s standard preauthorization only allows capturing the original rental amount, not additional charges.

Suggested workarounds include:

  • Partial.ly: Can charge additional fees at later dates but cannot do temporary card authorizations. Customers pay full rental price upfront and agree to potential future charges for damages/late returns.

  • Split it: Supports temporary authorizations but cannot charge above the authorized amount. Would require holding the rental price plus maximum potential fees upfront, then only charging what’s needed.

  • Subscription apps (e.g., Seal Subscriptions): A creative workaround where a subscription is created behind the scenes and swapped with a “penalty fee” product if needed. This introduces customer confusion due to subscription language appearing at checkout.

Key limitations: No ideal solution exists within Shopify’s native capabilities. Storing payment info directly raises PCI compliance and legal concerns requiring consultation with accountants and lawyers. The discussion remains open with participants still seeking better alternatives.

Summarized with AI on November 2. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
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Hi Hjth96,

I haven’t found any “good” solutions unfortunately. The one we are experimenting with now is to use subscriptions as a workaround. Basically, we create a subscription behind the scenes when they purchase the product, and swap the product with a separate “penalty fee” product. Our policies describe this potential charge, but don’t call it a subscription. It does introduce difficulties with not confusing the customers with the subscription language which then starts popping up on the checkout page when there is a subscription present. It’s a bit of a headache. I wish there was a better option.

We’re currently using Seal Subscription app for this. Reach out to them for further guidance

https://apps.shopify.com/seal-subscriptions