by satdaya » December 29th, 2011, 4:42 pm
This feature is typically used for retail companies where they have to authorize the card but not actually charge it until the product is shipped. So they ship the product then log in to their merchant account to finish the process, aka "capture" the credit card purchase.
Most gateways have this capability but it depends on the software settings that interact with the gateways - ie., Paypal Pro has this capability but s2member would have to "tell" paypal just to authorize the membership fee, not charge it. I believe some other gateways can "force" this capability per the account settings, but I'm not sure and would have to log in to each gateway provider (and I don't have access to all kinds) to check. I thought it'd be easier to ask here.
For this client's situation in particular, they have to approve the member application before charging the card, they don't accept just any member registration, and I thought the simplest way to make this possible is to just pre-authorize and then charge the card using the same technique that retailers shipping products use.
I can imagine that some other S2member customers would need this for retail purposes - ie,. if becoming a member means they get a kit shipped to them... by law they would be required not to actually charge the card until the kit is shipped.