How can I use Stripe to delay charging a customer until a physical item is shipped?

Question

I\'m in the process of building an online marketplace which sells shippable goods. The site will be similar to Etsy, which will connect merchants with buyers.

I\'d like

Answer 1

After further research, it seems there's no way to delay capturing a charge past the 7 day authorization window.

But here's one way to delay a charge:

1. Tokenize a credit card using the stripe.js library
2. Create a new stripe customer passing in the token as the "card" param

An example from the Stripe FAQ: https://support.stripe.com/questions/can-i-save-a-card-and-charge-it-later

Note that the longer you wait between tokenizing a card and actually charging it, the more likely your charge will be declined for various reasons (expired card, lack of funds, fraud, etc). This also adds a layer of complexity (and lost sales) since you'll need to ask a buyer to resubmit payment info.

I'd still like to confirm that a certain amount can be charged (like a "preauthorization"), but this lets me at least charge the card at a later date.