After careful consideration, we’ve decided not to support taking deposits for crowdfunding campaigns.
We understand that some merchants may require this feature, but our priority is to ensure the safety and security of all transactions made through our platform and we feel there may be some ethical dilemmas with taking payments for something that may not succeed and go into production. We believe that limiting the risks of scams and frauds associated with selling plans is crucial to maintaining the trust of our users.
If taking a payment before the campaign end or regardless of campaign Goal state (Successful and Failed) is something that you or your merchant require we’d propose building the front end in a way that would add two items to the cart when the Add to Cart button is clicked on that product page. The first product would be the Crowdfund Campaign product and the second would be a regular item (no selling plan attached) - therefore that regular item would be charged at checkout and could be fulfilled and the crowdfund will be handled as usual.