This is true but there are complexities. It's something that people can easily run afoul of if they're not paying close enough attention. If you charge someone

This is true but there are complexities. It's something that people can easily run afoul of if they're not paying close enough attention. If you charge someone for a pre-order of something that doesn't actually exist yet and has a risk of not existing at all then you can be in violation of Visa/MC TOS quite easily. Typically the way most pre-orders work is that there's a deposit and then the actual charge occurs within some window of time prior to the thing being shipped. If you want to do crowd funding you can do that but you need to set up the expectations differently, to make sure that people know that they are donating to a project and maybe receiving a reward. Also, when purchasing things like plane or concert tickets it's important to note that you're not pre-ordering anything you're buying a reservation, you're purchasing a place on a list which will be used to allow entrance to that event or trip.