Hi,
I'm having a hard time understanding the difference between intent sale and authorization when using the Payments API.
I'm creating a custom payment solution for a friend of mine and wonder which of both approaches I should use. My workflow looks like this:
1) buyer puts item in shopping cart -> 2) selects shipping and payment method -> 3) enters his personal data -> 4) overview -> 5) get buyer approval (paypal checkout) -> 6) check again if item still in stock -> 7) decrease stock -> 😎 execute payment
I don't want to decrease my inventory before I get an approval from the buyer but there might be an instance where the item is sold out during step 5 (where I'm getting the buyers approval), therefore I would not execute the payment but inform the buyer that the item was sold out in the meantime.
At this point I have multiple questions:
1) How are "sale" and "authorization" different when using an approach like this.
2) How long can an approved payment be executed when using intent sale method (I think that might be one of the main differences between both methods? I found some information about authorization and its lifetime but no information about the sale method)
3) What happens if an approved payment (intent: sale) never gets executed, e.g. when will it be invalid?
4) Will the buyer have any disadvantages when I dont execute an approved payment? Will any funds be blocked for him? From what I get there is no way to "delete" an approved payment.
5) When the payment was approved (intent: sale) I can't find any information about it, neither in the buyers nor in the sellers account, shouldn't there be any information or is it only available using the api?
