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While similar, Validate and Pre-Authorize offer different methods regarding how a card payment accepted. We typically suggest most accounts to us the Validate Card Method.
Validate Card
Validate Card
With Validate Card, a hold of $1 is put on the credit card. The hold never expires, meaning that you can Validate a card six months prior to taking final payment.
It's great if you frequently have Orders placed for dates far into the future as it allows you to ensure the card's validity to use without taking full payment. This way, the Order can be edited and have prices changed before it's fulfilled and payed for.
Validate Card differs from Pre-Auth in that it simply ensures the card is authentic and usable. It does not ensure that the card has sufficient funds to pay for the whole Order. because the purpose is mostly to ensure that the card is authentic and usable.
While this option can be “riskier” due to not double checking that a customer can afford the purchase before it's made, most businesses can trust that their customer's card can support the total catering order. Having the option to take payment at any time without worrying about a pre-auth expiration make Validate Card the favored option in most cases.
A Validated card looks like this in the Payments Tab:
Pre-Authorize Card
Pre-Authorize Card
Pre-Authorization places a credit hold on the total amount of the Order prior to final payment. This ensures that the Customer's card has enough funds to cover the full bill. checks that a credit card actually has sufficient funds to make the payment.
Because Pre-Authorization places a full credit hold on the card, it can only hold this amount for a set amount of time. After that date passes, the pre-authorization will expire. If the final payment for the card wasn't taken within that window, you must void the expired authorization and re-authorize the card.
If you pre-authorize a card to pay for a $300 order, a hold of $300 is placed on that card till either full payment is taken or the hold expires.
Pre-Auth Expiration Window
Each payment gateway has a set amount of days an authorization will holds on a card before the authorization expires.
Stripe: 7 days
Square: 7 days
Authorize.net: 30 days
FreedomPay: 30 days
SagePay // Opayo : 30 days
A Pre-Authorization shows up like this in the Payments Tab:
Since Pre-Authorization expires after a given amount of time, we typically suggest clients to Validate Cards as a method of taking payment. This option doesn't expire, so final payment can be taken at any time.
Depending on your catering needs, either option can be beneficial. However, since Pre-Authorization has an expiration date after which you must re-authorize the card if a final payment wasn't taken, we typically recommend the Validate Card payment option. Validated Cards never expire, so you can Validate a card for an order set to be fulfilled six months prior to taking the final payment.
Please note that card details are not saved directly on to the Spoonfed system. Instead, the card is saved in the secure server of your payment gateway and a token created allowing Spoonfed to link to the card. Spoonfed system does not have access to full credit card information.
Further Reading on Taking Card Payments