I would like to discuss possibility of delegating payments for already placed ‘potential’ orders. This would allow individuals and organizations to complement their fundraising / crowdfunding campaings with more in-kind support. One can think about systems like https://www.patreon.com/ but allowing ‘patrons’ to choose what exactly they want to sponsor.
On technical side I think this would require separating checkout into two steps:
- Order - consumer details + shipping info
- Payment - billing details + payment method
As well as treating the orders as potential orders which still need payment to become complete order.
This way individual or organization could place an order and than ask their supporters for doing the payment. I see it very different from asking money directly, In some ways more precise, honest and transparent. Also people can prefer to donate food over donating money, as well as asking for food rather than asking for money.
This could also work well together with systems like http://www.leetchi.com/
1 Like
Uncanny. We are in discussions about how to handle payments in standing /
recurring orders and one of my jobs for the weekend is to write that up. I
suspect we could get it to cover this. Back later.
1 Like
OK, see discussion on Payment for Standing Orders BUT on reading this again, I think we’re talking slightly different thing.
Implementation of standing orders will allow for creation of a ‘potential order’ which isn’t processed until certain conditions are met (e.g. ‘OC closes’ for standing order)
This could perhaps be applied as ‘potential order’ which isn’t processed until payment is confirmed, and have some way for users to make partial payments against that order (e.g. integration with Leetchi)
Opens up more questions e.g. are customer payments actually processed or just promised before total is reached and order is finalised? if the former and is never reached then someone has to pay it back. If the latter then probably some payments will never get collected etc - but i guess this is the issue of the org
If looking at (for example) use of leetchi, not sure much else actually needs to be done in OFN (except perhaps interface to explain, invite etc) because the organisation could just create the order, contact their supporters, and complete/process the order once they’re happy they’ve got the money? They could just do this now, but would of course be manual /clunky!
I would leave it up to people and other services to deal with the fund-raising details. From OFN side I would just see need to
- Create ‘potential’ order with permanent public link (URL)
- Allowing that user accounts, other than account which created given ‘potential’ order, can do the payment for that order.
- If available products in OC can’t fulfil that ‘potential’ order any more, it should notify account which created it and disable payment for it until account placing order adjusts that order according to new products availability.