About Pre-authorizing, Capturing, and Forcing Credit Card Payments

Learn more

If you use Payment Processing, you pre-authorize a credit card payment when you want to verify that sufficient credit exists on a customer's credit card before processing a sale.

When you create a pre-authorization, the cardholder's credit limit is reduced by the amount of the pre-authorization until the pre-authorization is captured or expires.

After pre-authorizing a payment, you can capture (process) the payment or void the pre-authorization.

If a pre-authorization has expired recently, you may be able to force a payment for the pre-authorized amount.

Pre-authorizing Payments

On the O/E Order Entry screen, you can click the Pre-authorize button to pre-authorize a credit card payment.

The amount of a pre-authorization does not need to match the amount captured in the final sale. The captured amount may be more (as when a restaurant customer adds a tip) or less (as when a service station customer swipes a credit card, and then purchases fuel that costs less than the amount pre-authorized for a fill-up).

Important!

If it is likely that more than seven days will pass before an order is shipped, you should not pre-authorize a credit card payment for the order. If you do, the pre-authorization may expire, in which case your merchant service provider will charge a fee. (Credit card pre-authorization in Paya expires after approximately seven days.)

Rather than pre-authorize a credit card payment, you can process an initial prepayment when the order is created, and then process the balance when the order is shipped.

For more information, see Pre-authorizing a Credit Card Payment.

Capturing Pre-authorized Payments

You capture a pre-authorized credit card payment when you are ready to process payment for goods that you have shipped, or for goods or services that a customer has received.

You can capture a pre-authorization only once. After you capture it, the pre-authorization is released in full, regardless of whether the amount captured matches the amount that was pre-authorized.

On some Order Entry transaction screens, you can click the Capture button to capture (process) a pre-authorized credit card payment. This button appears on the O/E Order Entry screen.

For information about Payment Processing options, see the Payment Processing help.

For more information about capturing pre-authorized payments, see the following topics:

Capturing a Pre-authorized Credit Card Payment

Forcing Payment for Expired Pre-authorizations

If a pre-authorization has expired, you may be able to force a payment for the pre-authorized amount.

Note: Forced transactions may be subject to higher fees than regular transactions, depending on the terms of your agreement with your merchant service provider.

You can force a payment if the pre-authorization has expired recently (typically within 30 days), and if you used a saved credit card for the pre-authorization (that is, you did not select the Enter A Card For One-Time Use option when processing the pre-authorization).

If you attempt to use the Process Credit Card screen to capture an expired pre-authorization that cannot be forced, a message informs you that you must create a new pre-authorization or prepayment.

Voiding Existing Pre-authorizations

On the O/E Order Entry screen, you can click the Void Pre-auth button to open the O/E Pre-authorization screen, and then click Void to void an existing pre-authorization.

Merchant service providers charge a fee for voiding a credit card pre-authorization. However, this fee is lower than the fee that is charged if you do not void or capture a pre-authorization and allow it to expire. For this reason, we recommend that you void any pre-authorization that will not be captured.

For more information, see Voiding a Credit Card Pre-authorization.