{"id":8798,"date":"2026-10-20T09:06:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T07:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/docs\/payment-types\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T09:07:45","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T08:07:45","password":"","slug":"payment-types","status":"publish","type":"docs","link":"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/en\/docs\/payment-types\/","title":{"rendered":"One-off payment, subscription, pre-authorisation, tokenisation: which to choose"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In almost every tool (Pages, Paylink, Terminal, Donation) you will find the <strong>Payment type<\/strong> option. Here is what changes, with an example for each case.<\/p>\n<h2>One-off payment<\/h2>\n<p>The customer pays once and the money is yours. This is nearly always the right choice: a sale, a deposit, a course registration.<\/p>\n<h2>Subscription<\/h2>\n<p>The customer pays at regular intervals and the charge happens by itself, with nothing for you to do. Perfect for monthly fees, courses in instalments, gym memberships. The customer receives a confirmation for each charge and can cancel from their payment page. All the details in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/en\/docs\/subscriptions\/\">Subscriptions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Pre-authorisation<\/h2>\n<p>The amount is blocked on the card but not charged. You capture it later, in full or in part, when you know the exact sum.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Example.<\/strong> You rent out an e-bike for CHF 60.- and block CHF 300.- as a deposit. It comes back undamaged: you capture CHF 60.- and release the rest.<\/p>\n<p>If you do not capture it, the block expires by itself after a period set by the customer&#8217;s bank, usually between 7 and 30 days. You manage everything under <strong>Payments &gt; Pre-authorisations<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2>Tokenisation<\/h2>\n<p>The customer saves their payment method and you can later charge agreed amounts to it. You do not store the card number: a secure code (the token) takes its place. Registration checks that the card is valid, not that it has money on it. You will find everything under <strong>Payments &gt; Tokenisations<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>This is useful, for example, if you bill monthly by usage or want to charge an extra after the service.<\/p>\n<h2>Not every method can do everything<\/h2>\n<p>TWINT, PostFinance Pay, Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay support subscriptions with the Pay provider. Purchase on invoice, crypto and Klarna accept one-off payments only. Before setting up a subscription or pre-authorisation, check that the methods you want support it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In almost every tool (Pages, Paylink, Terminal, Donation) you will find the Payment type option. Here is what changes, with an example for each case. One-off payment The customer pays once and the money is yours. This is nearly always the right choice: a sale, a deposit, a course registration. Subscription The customer pays at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"doc_category":[201],"doc_tag":[],"class_list":["post-8798","docs","type-docs","status-publish","hentry","doc_category-payments"],"acf":[],"year_month":"2026-11","word_count":304,"total_views":0,"reactions":{"happy":0,"normal":0,"sad":0},"author_info":{"name":"1pay.ch","author_nicename":"1pay_admin","author_url":"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/en\/author\/1pay_admin\/"},"doc_category_info":[{"term_name":"Payments","term_url":"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/en\/docs-category\/payments\/"}],"doc_tag_info":[],"knowledge_base_info":[],"knowledge_base_slug":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/8798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/docs"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8798"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/8798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9645,"href":"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/8798\/revisions\/9645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"doc_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doc_category?post=8798"},{"taxonomy":"doc_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.1pay.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doc_tag?post=8798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}