Handle Limited Edition Sales - Raffle functionality

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment

Topic summary

Goal: enable limited-edition product sales via a lottery/raffle where only selected entrants can complete purchase.

Proposed flow:

  • Time window (e.g., 1 week) to visit the product page and enter the lottery.
  • Entry occurs on the product page; users “subscribe” to the lottery.
  • At entry, place a payment authorization hold (temporarily blocks funds) equal to the product price on the customer’s credit card.
  • After the window closes, select winners.
  • Winners are allowed to finalize checkout; non-winners have the authorization hold released.

Key implementation needs: checkout gating for winners, payment processor support for authorization holds and delayed capture, and automated release for non-winners.

Status: request for implementation guidance; no solutions or decisions provided yet. The discussion remains open with unanswered questions on how to set this up end-to-end.

Summarized with AI on January 2. AI used: gpt-5.
1

I would like to organize limited edition sales, conducting them through a “Lottery” system, where only selected winners can complete the purchase of the product.

In particular:

  1. During a specific time frame (e.g., 1 week), users can visit a product page.

  2. Within the product page, they can proceed to subscribe to the lottery.

  3. While subscribing to the lottery, the amount corresponding to the price of the product will be temporarily blocked on their credit card.

  4. At the end of the time frame, only selected winners will be able to purchase the product. For those who are not winners, the blocked amount on their credit card will be released.

Is there a way to implement this?