It is against most merchant rules (and PayPal) to process a complete transaction without the product or service being immediately available. For pre-orders, yo

It is against most merchant rules (and PayPal) to process a complete transaction without the product or service being immediately available. For pre-orders, you can collect card information and authorizations, but you can only charge when the product or service is delivered. PayPal doesn't support that at all (it is messy) Even with pre-orders the condition usually is that you need to deliver within 30 or 60 days (depends on the merchant). It is definitely not a good idea to collect money with the promise of a product in the future. This is why Kickstarter, GroupOn etc. only charge cards later on, and make it clear to users with disclaimers.