I can explain this best by describing how I accomplish this with another payment provider.
An end user (customer) will create an account and authorize their credit card through the provider and we store a token given to us by that provider. Our client (the admin of that system) can then charge that user without the user being present as they have authorized this action a head of time. The price depends on many different factors and can change over time as well. In one case, the customer is a business and they pay for all of their employees, the number of employees changes month to month.
In another scenario, the same token can be used to purchase on demand items by the customer without needing to get their payment details, just a simple "Purchase Now" option as they have already authorized the use of the payment method earlier.
How would I accomplish either of these through PayPal? The term I've often seen used on these other providers is tokenization, but I don't see that in PayPal. Pre-authorization to me looks like a one-time authorization that lasts for several days before expiring if not used. Subscriptions look too rigid and not something where each customer can have their own price without having to make a subscription for each of them.
If it's simply a terminology issue and there's a guide, can you point me to that?
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