Shipping with Stripe and EasyPost

2 min read

Let's say that instead of running a Software as a Service, you're actually building and shipping physical products. Let's say quadcopter kits. People come to your website, buy a quadcopter kit, and then you build it and ship it to them. It takes you a few days to build the kit, though, and you would rather not charge the customer until you ship. Traditionally Stripe has been focused on paying for online services but recently they added the ability to authorize and capture payments in two steps. In this post we're going to explore billing with Stripe and shipping with EasyPost with separate charge and capture.

Step 1: Calculate Shipping

EasyPost makes it really simple to calculate shipping rates. Just take the customer's shipping address and create an EasyPost::Shipment object:

from_address = EasyPost::Address.create(
  name:    'Pete Keen',
  street1: '618 NW Glisan Ave',
  city:    'Portland',
  state:   'OR',
  zip:     '97211',
  country: 'US',
  email:   'pete@petekeen.net'
)

to_address = EasyPost::Address.create(
  name:    params[:to_name],
  street1: params[:to_street1],
  city:    params[:to_city],
  state:   params[:to_state],
  zip:     params[:to_zip],
  country: params[:to_country],
  email:   params[:email],
)

parcel = EasyPost::Parcel.create(
  length: 10,
  width: 10,
  height: 6,
  weight: 30,
)

shipment = EasyPost::Shipment.create(
  to_address: to_address,
  from_address: from_address,
  parcel: parcel
)

@rates = shipment['rates']

Display those rates to the customer, have them pick the one they want, and then move on to the next step.

Step 2: Authorize

Charging a card and just doing the authorization step are remarkably similar. Just get the user's credit card info with stripe.js or checkout.js and then make the charge with the capture parameter set to false:

charge = Stripe::Charge.create(
  card:   params[:stripeToken],
  amount: 10000 + (@selected_rate['rate'].to_f * 100).to_i,
  currency: 'usd',
  capture: false
)

This will authorize a charge of $100 plus the shipping rate for up to seven days. EasyPost gives back shipping rates as decimal strings, so to give it to Stripe we have to convert it to a number, then to cents, and finally to an integer. Save shipment.id and charge.id to your database, you'll need them later.

Step 3: Build the Product

You're on your own here. Just make sure to get everything done in 7 days, because after that Stripe will release the funds from the customer's credit card and the charge object won't be valid anymore.

Step 4: Ship It!

Now you're at the point where you're ready to ship. All you have to do now is purchase the shipping label and tell Stripe to capture the charge:

shipment = Shipment.retrieve(saved_shipment_id)
label = shipment.buy

charge = Stripe::Charge.retrieve(saved_charge_id)
charge.capture

label_url = label['label_pdf_url']
# display the url and print it

Now just print off the PDF, tape it to your box, and take the package to the UPS or FedEx store or the post office and drop it off. Wait a few weeks and search YouTube for quadcopter videos and you'll be sure to see one of your kits, gracefully flying around.

Conclusion

Stripe is awesome for processing credit cards. EasyPost is the easiest way to buy shipping known to man. Combine them and you have yourself a simple way to sell and ship physical products in the US and worldwide.