How to Design Pre-order Sales (2026 Edition) — Payments, Logistics, and Legal Compliance in the Era of the 25-Day Authorization Rule

Pre-order sales are one of the most effective selling schemes in e-commerce. Beyond selling against future purchasing plans, if production capacity is in sight you can place orders with your manufacturer for exactly the quantity sold — a "make only what sells" made-to-order model. Pre-orders reduce inventory risk while preventing lost sales on popular items — designed well, they benefit both the merchant and the customer.

This article was originally published in December 2020, and we have now rewritten it from the ground up, for two reasons. One is Shopify's evolution: many of the problems you once had to engineer yourself — purchase options, split shipping — have become standard platform features. The other is the credit card "25-day authorization rule" that takes effect on July 23, 2026. A rule change that fundamentally reshapes payment operations for long-lead-time pre-orders is starting right now.

The Big Shift of 2026: the 25-Day Authorization Rule

In credit card payments, the common practice has long been to place an authorization hold at order time to secure the customer's credit, then capture the payment at shipment. In Japan, authorizations could typically be held for up to 60–90 days, and the classic pre-order payment design — "hold the authorization until shipment, capture when you ship" — was built on that long validity window.

From July 2026, that premise collapses under changes to Visa and Mastercard brand regulations.

Three points stand out. First, authorization validity for domestically issued cards is shortened to 25 days at most. Second, overseas-issued cards are limited to 7 days at most — even shorter — so for cross-border commerce, pre-orders that take weeks to ship simply stop working as-is. Third, authorizations that pass their deadline will be automatically cancelled on the payment provider's side. Recovering the money afterward means asking the customer to pay again or re-authorizing — and with the risk of credit-limit failures and cooled purchase intent, that can amount to revenue simply lost.

In short, the old assumption that "we can hold the authorization as long as needed until shipping" no longer holds. Any merchant running pre-orders or made-to-order sales where shipment may take more than 25 days needs to rethink the payment design itself.

Payment Design: Three Options on Shopify

As background knowledge: Shopify Payments authorization validity differs by card brand. Visa, Mastercard, and American Express allow up to 30 days, but JCB and Discover are 10 days, and Diners Club and UnionPay are 7 days. Given JCB's meaningful share in Japanese e-commerce, "capture on shipment for every order" was an accident waiting to happen even before this rule change. With that in mind, pre-order payment design boils down to three options.

Option A: Take immediate payment (pay up front)

Capture the full amount at order time. You are completely free of authorization deadlines and collection is certain. This is the approach the old version of this article recommended as the pragmatic compromise; in accounting terms, treat the money as an advance received at payment time and report revenue on a shipment basis. Note, however, that receiving payment before shipping makes the transaction a "prepaid mail-order sale" under Japan's Act on Specified Commercial Transactions, which triggers the acceptance-notice obligation of Article 13 (covered below).

Option B: Charge later (purchase options)

Since 2022, Shopify has offered purchase options (deferred purchase options), with pre-orders supported natively. At order time you charge only a deposit (a percentage such as "20% of the total" is configurable) while the card is securely tokenized and stored; the balance is then charged automatically to the stored card on a specified date. Because no authorization is held long-term, this design is unaffected by the 25-day rule. Official support for triggering the balance charge at shipment ("due on fulfillment") is also progressing, widening the implementation options further. In practice, the realistic route is a pre-order app that supports purchase options.

Option C: Standard authorization + manual capture (short lead times only)

If the lead time stays within 7 days, you can operate with Shopify Payments' standard authorization plus manual capture (or automatic capture at fulfillment). Even then, we strongly recommend enabling "Send a warning 1 day before an authorization expires" under Settings > Payments. If an unexpected inbound delay occurs, you can still recover before expiry — capture manually or send an invoice.

Choosing by lead time

• Within 7 days: Option C (standard authorization + the warning email) is workable.
• 8–25 days: Option B (charge later) is the main candidate. If you run Option C, watch out for short-expiry brands such as JCB.
• Over 25 days (apparel pre-orders, made-to-order, etc.): Option A or B. Do not build on held authorizations.

Aside: a lightweight no-app implementation (Liquid + Flow)

If all you need is "start selling automatically at a specified date and time," you can do it without an app. Give the target products a management tag (e.g. "scheduled-sale"), and in your theme's Liquid templates disable the buy button for products carrying that tag, showing "Ships sequentially from ○月○日" instead. Then use Shopify Flow's Scheduled time trigger to remove the tag automatically at the specified moment — from that instant the product can be purchased normally. It costs nothing extra to run, but offers no deferred payments or split shipping — it is strictly a trade-off limited to "automating the sales-start announcement and order acceptance." This is a theme (Liquid) store technique, though the same idea can be implemented on the frontend of a headless build.

Logistics Design: Split or Restrict?

What do you do when a pre-order item and an in-stock item are ordered together? This is the classic pre-order question, covered in the old version of this article too. It used to be a choice between two painful options: hold the in-stock items until the pre-order arrives, or build a custom "separate carts" experience into the theme.

Today, Shopify's standard answer to this problem is split shipping in checkout. When pre-order and in-stock items are mixed in the cart, checkout automatically separates them into delivery groups — "Shipment 1 (in stock): ships today" and "Shipment 2 (pre-order): expected ○月○日" — and the customer can choose a shipping option per shipment. It's enabled under Settings > Shipping and delivery, and the order is processed as multiple fulfillment orders. The "separate carts" build the old article described has been replaced by a platform feature.

But don't celebrate just yet: split shipping has a compatibility problem with shipping-fee design. Say your store offers free shipping on orders over ¥10,000, and a customer buys ¥7,500 of in-stock items plus a ¥5,000 pre-order. The ¥12,500 total qualifies for free shipping — but the goods actually ship twice, so the shipping cost you bear doubles. For low-priced products with heavy shipping costs, this eats straight into margin.

The countermeasure is the bundling restriction (no mixed purchase) approach: block pre-order and in-stock items from being purchased together at the cart stage, and have customers check out separately. Apps can implement this without code, with fine-grained rules such as "only pre-orders arriving in the same month can be bundled" or "made-to-order items must be purchased alone." It also helps prevent mixing chilled, frozen, and ambient shipping temperatures.

Whether to "split" or "restrict" depends on average order value, shipping-fee design, and product characteristics. Stores that lean on free-shipping thresholds benefit more from restrictions; stores that price shipping close to actual cost can simply enjoy the customer-experience upside of splitting.

Legal: Japan's Act on Specified Commercial Transactions

Because pre-orders form contracts and take payment before the goods are delivered, Japan's mail-order regulations (the Act on Specified Commercial Transactions) apply in full. Two points to design for.

The six items on the final confirmation screen

The 2022 amendment to the Act tightened display obligations on the "final confirmation screen" — in Shopify, the screen with the "Complete order" button. For pre-orders in particular, you must clearly present: (1) quantity, (2) price and total payable, (3) timing and method of payment, (4) delivery timing (a concrete estimate such as "ships early-to-mid March"), (5) the cancellation/return policy, and (6) the application period for limited-time pre-orders. Also note: if you do not state a return policy on your site, the statutory default applies — customers may return items within 8 days of receipt at their own shipping cost. If you want "no cancellations once a pre-order is confirmed," you must spell that out.

The "acceptance notice" for prepaid sales (Article 13)

When you receive payment (in full or in part) before shipping, as in Option A, the sale qualifies as a "prepaid mail-order sale" under Article 13 of the Act, which obliges you to send — without delay after receiving the money — a notice (email is acceptable) stating your acceptance of the order, the amount received, the delivery timing, and so on. Shopify's standard order confirmation email may not fully satisfy these requirements on its own, so we recommend a Shopify Flow workflow triggered by "Order paid × order tag PreOrder" that automatically sends an acceptance-notice email containing the statutory items. However large your pre-order volume grows, no notice slips through.

Operations & CX: Design the Waiting Period

Because so much time passes between purchase and delivery, pre-orders demand more communication design than regular sales. When lead times stretch to months, it is not unusual for customers to forget the order altogether.

The author once toured a fulfillment warehouse and watched the returns shelf swelling — with pre-ordered items coming back because customers had moved, forgotten the order entirely, and could not receive the delivery. Products someone had once eagerly pre-ordered, sitting unclaimed on a warehouse shelf. Honestly, it was painful to see. Designing the "waiting period" of a pre-order is not only about revenue: it is about preventing wasteful logistics and returns costs, and disappointing customer experiences.

Concrete measures:

• Shipping reminders: As the ship date approaches, notify customers via LINE or SMS, which have far higher open rates than email. Combining Shopify Flow with a LINE integration app lets you auto-send on "Fulfillment created × PreOrder tag" — ideally doubling as a prompt to confirm the delivery address.
• Automatic switch from stockout to backorder: Have Flow detect zero inventory and automatically enable "Continue selling when out of stock" plus apply the pre-order rule. You move into backorders while preventing overselling.
• Clarity on the storefront: Pre-order badges on product cards, clearly stated expected ship dates, and automatically hiding the delivery date picker when a pre-order is in the cart — thorough separation of "ships now" and "pre-order" also prevents mistaken-purchase complaints.

Conclusion

Introducing pre-orders is not "changing the label on the buy button" — it is integrated design across payments, logistics, legal compliance, and customer communication.

• The 25-day rule taking effect in July 2026 ends the old "hold the authorization, capture at shipment" design. Depending on lead time, move to immediate payment (pay up front) or charge-later (purchase options).
• In logistics, split shipping is now a standard feature, but it interacts badly with free-shipping thresholds — knowing when to use bundling restrictions instead is key.
• If you take payment up front, automate the Article 13 acceptance notice with Flow and fulfill it reliably.
• Designing communication for the "waiting period" prevents mountains of cancellations, refused deliveries, and returns.

Legal compliance, shipping-cost control, and reliable payment collection: optimizing the balance of these three for your products and lead times is what makes pre-orders a sustainable selling scheme. With the 25-day rule taking effect, now is a good moment to re-inspect your own pre-order design.

References and Sources

• Purchase options (Shopify Help Center)
• Pre-orders (Shopify Help Center)
• Payment authorization and capture (Shopify Help Center)
• Split shipping in Shopify Checkout (Shopify Help Center)
• About pre-order and Try Before You Buy (shopify.dev)
• Notice on the Visa / Mastercard rule changes (Color Me Shop — in Japanese)
• Transaction spec changes under the brand rule changes (GMO Payment Gateway — in Japanese)
• What is the 25-day authorization rule? (Recustomer — in Japanese)
• Guide to the Act on Specified Commercial Transactions (Consumer Affairs Agency, Japan)

This article is based on public information as of July 2026. The timing and details of the brand rule changes may differ by payment provider — always check the notices from the payment services you use. Statements concerning Japan's Act on Specified Commercial Transactions are general commentary, not legal advice; consult a professional for decisions on specific cases.