Easiest way to collect credit cards without charging?
Hey all,
I'm currently looking to validate a product idea and want to assess buyers' willingness to pay by collecting credit card info without charging (until the product is actually built and delivered).
I've looked at Stripe and they have out-of-the-box payment forms but I don't see an option to just save credit card details without charging.
Is there an easy no-code way of putting up a form for collecting this card info?
Thanks for the help!
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Yes, it's called a form.
No, don't do this, it's a very bad idea.
Just collect email addresses and follow up with your potential customers once you have something to actually pay for. Entering unsaved credit card details was a crafty means of pre-product validation back in the day but it's not really done at present.
If you're absolutely set on taking CC info, set up an indefinite free trial that requires a CC, and then reconnect with your sign-ups with a manual opt-in to start actually paying you. You definitely don't want to be storing credit cards in plaintext with a no-code platform or even your own servers.
Got it, thanks for the response. Makes a ton of sense.
Tim Ferris concept of willingness to pay test was to have say a pay now button with price and if clicked considered a pass, the next page was just text, not real collection of c.c.
So for validation you don't really have to take the c.c.
I think what your looking for technically is a subscription type, you either need one with a dynamic price or with a free period or like suspension of the subscription
Got it. That makes sense. Thanks!
Others have echoed the same - I'd recommend using Stripe (or a merchant of record that uses Stripe) and ask them to either setup a trial that you can keep on adding days to (until your MVP is built), or just simply collect their other details e.g. name/website/business and ask them to join a waitlist.
Thanks, that makes sense!
It's under stripe payments method api. The option is under payment intent. I have implemented similar payments option for free trial on Webflow, Wized and Xano. To pull this off with Webflow only you will need custom JS and a database to track the payments and subscriptions.
Yup that checks out. Thanks!
You can do this with Stripe Checkout (you'll need a little bit of code to do it). If you are non-technically you can use a platform like PriceWell to do this (it is a layer on top of Stripe).
Alternatively, you can collect a subscription payment by PayPal that starts in a year, 6 months or whenever you want to start charging.
Apart from guaranteeing your revenue source when you make the move, it also forces you to deliver within the time frame.
If no one actually entered their details, then that’s the validation you need.
Design a good and reasonable early bird plan would be helpful.