Both models are one setting per campaign. The decision that actually matters is which one you nudge creators toward by default.
A backer's card is authorized at pledge time, but nothing is captured until the campaign hits its funding goal. If the goal isn't reached by the deadline, every authorization is released automatically - the backer sees the hold disappear, gets notified, and no admin has to touch anything. This is the model that protects backer trust: nobody is charged for a project that never happened.
The tradeoff is psychological, not technical: creators sometimes worry that a visible "goal or nothing" bar discourages early pledges. In practice it tends to do the opposite - backers are more willing to commit early precisely because they know they won't be charged if the campaign stalls.
There's no goal condition, so the charge happens right away. This suits ongoing creator funding (a maker who ships regardless of a specific target) better than a one-shot product launch. The cost is that a backer has less protection - if a project quietly stalls after collecting funds, there's no automatic refund mechanism the way there is with All-or-Nothing.
If a campaign has a concrete, single deliverable - a product, a specific piece of equipment, a one-time event - All-or-Nothing is the safer default. It's the model that makes the "nothing is charged unless this actually happens" promise credible, and it's the one backers on platforms like this have come to expect. Flexible makes more sense for continuous or open-ended funding where there's no single goal to hit or miss.
See how both models flow through to payout →
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