One of the features offered by Redsys is preauthorizations. Preauthorizations are like an advance reservation of the cost (which can be approximate) of a service or product.
Surely all of you, or almost all of you, have filled up tanks at self-service gas stations, where you insert your credit cards, press what you want to fill, and serve yourself. When this action is performed, a preauthorization of the amount is made, so the gas station ensures that they will charge the amount. Once you have filled up, they will charge the amount you have filled on the card, whether partial or total.
This is what can be done in WooCommerce with Redsys, only we are not talking about filling tanks, but about other things.
For example, we have all bought bulk items, that is, food, paints, etc. that are purchased by weight. When purchases are made in an online store, and we buy X grams of ham, or beef, or pears, or almonds, we will give the possibility to specify to our customer how much weight they want. When you go to buy at the market or supermarket, and you ask for 250g of whatever, isn’t it true that they never give you exactly 250g of it? There will always be a fluctuation up or down, and you will be charged exactly for the weight they give you. Well, in the online store, the same thing happens. It is simply impossible to put exactly the weight that some customers request, so if we want to be fair to them, or not to ‘lose’ money, we will have to adjust the price to what the actual weight of what we are going to send them is.
Another of the functionalities of preauthorizations is hotel reservations, apartments, etc. In these cases, what is done is to reserve a deposit, and if the person who did not reserve does not show up, or cancels outside the agreed dates, a charge will be made to the card.
The beauty of preauthorizations is that you can charge anything less than desired, or charge about 10% more, so in the case where, for example, instead of putting 1kg of oranges, it ended up being 1.2kg, we could charge those extra 200g without problems.
To be able to perform preauthorizations, you need 3 things: one, that your bank accepts preauthorizations; two, that they activate it for you in Redsys; and three, a plugin for WooCommerce that accepts and manages preauthorizations. For this, you have the Premium plugin from Redsys for WooCommerce, which you can find at WooCommerce.com
With the Premium from Redsys for WooCommerce.com plugin, you will be able to perform preauthorizations in Redsys, and later modify the amount to be charged (if necessary) and approve the preauthorization to make it effective.
Hola Jose.
Tengo una duda, ¿sabes cuanto tiempo puede mantenerse una preautorización sin ejecutarse?
He leído que son 6 días máximo y en mi caso no me valdría, pero no sé si es una información correcta y no encuentro nada en “fuentes oficiales”.
Muchas gracias por tu ayuda y por tu trabajo.
Hola,
Esto depende del banco. Hay algunos que llegan a los 15 días, pero te lo deberá confirmar el banco con el que trabajes.
Saludos