My employer has challenged me to build him a custom Point of Sale system and stripe was my first thought for payment processing. I work in food-delivery, and as such our current (as well as every other) POS immediately charges the card (verifies it? whatever), and then at the end of the night when tips are counted (whether from the drivers or tipped receipts in the tip box) the charge changes to whatever the customer agreed to.
I see I can do a few similar things:
update metadata on a charge (not what I need)
capture a charge (not what I need - won't let you use a value higher than the initial)
do a second charge for the tip (would hope to avoid this)
save the card information with Stripe after creating a customer object and not do any charge until after I know the tip (would hope to avoid this)
But, can I verify the customer can pay the amount (that initial charge) and then increase it later once we know if/how much they tipped?
Simply put, I'd like my flow to be:
Customer orders
Charge is issued for 20$ of food (Stripe)
Food is delivered, 5$ tip secured on the receipt
Receipts are turned in, 5$ tip is entered into system
Charge is changed to reflect the added tip (now 25$) (Stripe)
Is this possible with Stripe? If so, how?
If not, do you know of any other payment system that could implement this flow?
Short answer: no, that's not possible.
You could do something like this:
Create an uncaptured charge for the base amount.
Once the customer confirms the tip, try to create a charge for the base amount + tip.
3a. If the charge succeeds, release the first uncaptured charge (by refunding it).
3b. If the charge fails, capture the first uncaptured charge (and maybe explain to your customer that they were only billed for the base amount).
Related
I'm working on a fundraiser app.
Users can create a fundraiser - with a donation category - pledges (performance-based) donations.
That means - if a school has a running event - parents (or any other person) can go to a participant's fundraiser page and donate x amount of money per unit (in this case meter)
for example, the parent can decide to donate $1 per meter. therefore, if the kid ran 50 meters, the total amount will be - 50$.
I want to know what will be the best way to handle this kind of donation using Stripe.
What we are doing now is:
Creating a customer (if doesnt exist already) so we can store the card for later use. creating setup intent - sending the client's secret from the back end to the front end.
let customer = stripe.customers.create(options)
stripe.setupIntents.create({customer: customer.id ...})
On the front end - A donor filling the amount per unit (1$ per meter) - the donor can tip the platform (percent of the total amount or flat)
The donor filling the card inside Stripe form.
On the back end - we are attaching the card to the customer, storing data on the db (amount, tip, customer id, intent id)
When the event is over - the user can close the fundraiser and charge all the cards based on the amount and units. for example - we have 10 kids, each kid has 5 donations, each donation is 1$ per meter, and each kid ran 50 meters.
On the back end - we are looping through all the donations related to the fundraiser. creating a payment intent that automatically charged for each donation.
let donations = Donations.find({fundraiser: fundraiserId...})
donations.forEach((item)=>{
stripe.paymentIntents.create(
{
payment_method: donation.payment_method,
amount: donation.amount * participant.units + donation.tip,
off_session: true,
confirm: true,
...
}
})
The issues we are facing:
Stripe rate limiter - allows us to do 100 calls in a second for live mode. that means we need to slow our loop with interval.
Catching errors and success - in order to catch errors and success we need to async await, stripe functions returning promise. the problem with await is that it slows down the loop alot - one solution will be to use webhook to catch all the reponses - the issue is the amount of requests from stripe - we will need also to think about a rate limiter - but in case of multiple users requesting donations charges we can end up with many many incoming requests from stripe.
To not let all the users to request payments at once (to prevent massive requests - and sending massive amount of requests to stripe) - we need to handle a queue system (so we will not exceed the limit by Stripe and we can handle incoming requests from stripe). what do you think can be a good queue system - should it be on a seperate server? - do you think there is a better solution?
what fo you think would be the best approach in general to achieve the pledges (performance based) donations system.
**I can share more code if needed. and im willing to answer any question to clear it out.
With the charges API, a token would eventually be handed to the server that would allow you to charge against the customer's credit card, and the last step to complete the payment is handled by my server. This would allow you to do something like:
// Prevent anyone else from purchasing widget while we sell this one
lock(database){
if (widgetsAvailableCount > 0) {
widgetsAvailableCount--;
var charge = chargeService.Create(optionsForWidgetCharge);
}
else {
throw new Exception("Item is out of stock");
// Don't create charge against token in this case
}
}
This allows you to prevent a race condition where you sell the last remaining item to two people.
But with the PaymentIntents API, it seems that the final step in charging the credit card no longer happens on my server, but will happen when the client calls:
https://stripe.com/docs/js/payment_intents/confirm_card_payment
And it's not clear how long that will actually take (say, if a 3D Secure prompt is shown).
I'm trying to solve the same problem as above, avoiding the situation of accepting payment when there is no inventory left (where inventory was available at the time the payment process started but not when it was completed). I could mark in the database the item in a "reserved" state, but I'm wondering if I'm thinking about this the right way, and how others have addressed this if so.
I am trying to figure out how to handle consistency in the database.
In scenario:
User A has an accounting document in the database include a balance field representing the amount of his current money. (supposed initially he has 100$)
My system has many methods to charge his account.
Suppose 2 methods occur at the same time, each method charges him for 10$, these steps occur concurrently in below orders:
Method 1 READ his balance and store in memory (100$)
Method 2 READ his balance and store in memory (100$)
... some business logics
Method 1 UPDATE his balance by subtracting variable in memory by 10 (100$ - 10$) and then save it
Method 2 UPDATE his balance by subtracting variable in memory by 10 (100$ - 10$) and then save it
This means he has been charged only 10$ instead of 20$.
I searched this situation a while and can not get it clear (sorry for my stupidity).
Really appreciate yours helps to enlighten my featherbrained. :)
You just discovered why financial transactions are complicated :-)
Have you ever wondered why it takes time for you to have an updated balance in your bank account? Or why you actually have two balances, instead of one?
That's because your account can actually go negative and (up to a certain point) that will be fine.
So in a real life scenario what happens is that you have a balance of 100$, you pay 10$ and until that transaction is processed and confirmed by the receiver, you still have your 100$. If you do 20 transactions of 10$ each, you'll be able to complete them because the system will most likely not be able to notice.
And honestly, it shouldn't. Think of credit cards, you might not have enough money now, but maybe you know you'll have enough when the credit is due.
So, the race condition you describe only works if you actually read the value and then update it.
There are a few approaches:
Read the current balance, and update the row using the old balance as a field in the where statement. This way if it updates no rows you know that you need to re-read and update.
Don't update the balance and only do it time-based, say once per hour. Yes, you might still have to do some checks, but the system will overall be more responsive.
Lock the database row as your first step. This would work but there's a chance that it will make the app slower.
Race condition you describe is low level design concern. With backend engine like Node that will handle the incomming request in first come first serve fashion you don't need to think about this case. Race condition you describe is not possible if you respect the order in which database update callbacks are fired. They are fired in the same order they have been issued in. So you should call next update only when the previous has finished. Promisses are great way to do this.
According to Stripes documentation here if you add a Stripe object ID as the source when getting a list of balance transactions you should get all transactions related to that ID. (e.g. filtering by a charge ID will return all charge and refund transactions).
I have tried passing in a chargeId and do indeed get back the initial balance transaction that was created for that charge, however this charge also has 2 refunds associated with it that are not returned in the list. I have tried this with other charges and only ever seem to get back the initial balance transaction created, never any other transactions (particularly refunds which the docs say should be returned). I have my limit set to 100 items and I have tried using both the Stripe.Net API as well as PHP calls and get back the same results.
I've also attempted passing in customerId's to see if I could get back all balance transactions triggered by a Customer and in these cases I never get back any results at all. These are Customers that have triggered MANY transactions!
The arguments I am providing to the API are as follows:
Method: balance/list
Parameters: limit=100
source=[chargeId or customerId that has triggered multiple transactions]
My question is: Is this a bug in the API, is the documentation incorrect or is there an important parameter or aspect to this I am missing. I've also gone back to charges from 30+ days ago just to make sure it has nothing to do with the rolling transfer/pending/availability cycles.
Is the actual fact that you can only ever get back the initial transaction created by a chargeId, but nothing else. Anyone have any experience in this regard? Thanks in advance!
Looks like this is indeed either a bug or an error in the Stipe documentation. I've reported this to Stripe and just received the following message back from someone on the support team:
Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out and alerting us to this issue!
This does look like either a bug or an error in our documentation. I have shared this with my team and we are looking into this issue.
Thank you for using Stripe and please let me know if there's anything else we can do to help!
I will update this thread once I hear back from Stripe with either an update or a resolution.
My hunch is this isn't a bug: the Stripe behavior is technically correct. The BalanceTransaction API is returning all txns for that specific charge, which is only a single txn. The txns associated with the charge's refund are technically associated with those refund objects, not the charge. The same logic applied to disputes/chargebacks.
Here's some (untested!) ruby code demonstrating how to grab all of the txns for a charge:
def balance_transactions_for_charge(stripe_charge_id)
balance_transactions = []
charge = Stripe::Charge.retrieve(stripe_charge_id)
balance_transactions << charge.balance_transaction
balance_transactions += charge.refunds.data.map do |refund|
refund.balance_transaction
end
if charge.dispute
dispute = Stripe::Dispute.retrieve(charge.dispute)
# fairly certain that the dispute txn list includes the full object, not just IDs
balance_transactions += dispute.balance_transactions.data.map(&:id)
end
balance_transactions.map { |txn_id| Stripe::BalanceTransaction.retrieve(txn_id) }
end
I need to know is it possible to reserve or lock money with First Data API. Actually I don't know if process I am looking for is actually called "reservation", but I am thinking of standard procedure of locking certain amount of money on client CC so that client cannot spend it but I as a merchant, can return money without any cost to bank, client and myself if client or merchant wishes so. Kinda sorta like deposit. I just don't want to do full transaction and then return money with full transaction and pay every single step of it and then some for accounting nightmare.
1) Do an Authorization (a.k.a. Auth Only, Authorization hold) to freeze the maximum amount of funds you wish to access at a later date. Record the approval code from this transaction.
2) When it is time to charge the funds you wish to receive from the customer perform a Capture using the approval code received from the Authorization in step one.
Caveats:
1) You have a maximum of 30 days to capture the funds. This number may be lower for some credit cards.
2) You may only capture the funds set aside or less. You cannot capture more then the amount authorized.
3) You can only capture the funds once. This means if you capture an amount less then the total amount authorized and then you wish to go back later and get more you cannot do so. You would need to process another transaction with a fresh approval number to do so.
An Authorization hold may be what you need.