How can I authorize/capture Paypal payments at a later date on Wix website?

Question

I'm using Wix as an e-commerce solution and the way I understand it, I can only add code (not edit current code) to make specific changes to the site. The one change I want to make is to have the ability to authorize/capture PayPal payments at a later date for all the products I am selling.

I've read through the PayPal authorization/capture documentation here but am still confused for my specific use case considering the only button I have is a "Check Out with Paypal" once customers have added products to their cart as opposed to "Buy Now" or some of the other button options available.

Is there a way to easily integrate authorize/capture in this case and if so, can someone help me out with how? Hoping I can make one change no matter how many different products a customer is purchasing that allows me to either capture all or part of the entire purchase amount and void the rest.

I've scoured the internet, but don't feel like anything I've come across is directly applicable. See here and here . The latter link makes it look insanely easy, but again I think the problem lies in the fact that I'm using Wix and can't directly edit existing code.

If anyone can provide directions/code necessary to implement this I'd be extremely grateful. Thanks so much in advance!

Note: It appears Wix integrates with PayPal Standard and all I need is the "Basic Authorization" capability, NOT "Order Authorizations."

Answer 1

The latter link makes it look insanely easy, but again I think the problem lies in the fact that I'm using Wix and can't directly edit existing code.

You've nailed it. It would be that easy, just add the parameter paymentaction=authorization when redirecting to PayPal, but Wix needs to provide a way for this to happen.

Many shopping carts -- especially those that integrate via an API rather than Payments Standard -- have a checkbox in their settings to toggle on authorization mode vs. immediate capture (sale) mode. The reason API-based integrations are much more likely to implement such a setting, is that an API is needed for the shopping cart to be able to capture the authorization at a later point in time. API-less integrations (like payments standard) cannot do the capture themselves (because this requires an API call), and so with standard you'll always need to log into www.paypal.com for the capture later on.

Anyway, there's probably no way forward unless Wix provides you with one.

Wix could well be using an API integration rather than the HTML-only Payments Standard, but the problem is the same: the API needs to specify 'authorization' (instead of 'sale'/'capture'), and from their lack of documenting the feature it does not appear Wix has implemented this.

Most shopping cart/platform providers do support authorization and capture, so you could make the feature request to Wix, and/or consider switching providers if it's a must-have.

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On a general note, using authorization and capture adds complexity to payment processing, and the capture is not guaranteed to be successful. You can get a successful authorization and then have the payment fail when you try to capture it (happens in a certain % of cases, when funds are no longer available or the card decides to decline). So in general, you use immediate sale/capture at checkout time (not authorization) unless you have very specific and well-defined business needs to not be capturing up front (and refunding in the case of exceptions).