Payments glossary · Operations
Authorisation and Capture
Authorisation is the issuer's real-time approval of a card payment, which reserves the funds on the customer's account; capture is the merchant's later instruction to collect the authorised amount so it can be cleared and settled.
How Authorisation and Capture works
When a customer pays, the merchant's gateway sends an authorisation request through the acquirer and card network to the issuer, which approves or declines it within seconds. An approval does not move money; it places a hold on the funds. The merchant then captures the transaction, either immediately in a combined sale or later, for example when goods are dispatched. Only captured transactions are submitted for clearing and paid out.
Separating the two steps helps when the final amount or fulfilment is uncertain. Hotels, car hire firms and fuel stations use estimated authorisations and adjust them, and online retailers often capture on dispatch. Authorisations do not last indefinitely: card scheme rules set a maximum time between authorisation and clearing. Visa's global rules allow 10 calendar days for most cardholder-initiated online transactions, 30 days for hotels, vehicle rental and cruise lines using estimated authorisations, and five days for most in-store and merchant-initiated transactions. Transactions processed late may need a new authorisation and can be disputed.
If an order is cancelled before capture, the merchant should void or reverse the authorisation so the customer's funds are released promptly; after capture, money can only be returned through a refund, which takes longer to reach the customer. Partial captures for split shipments and incremental authorisations for rising bills are supported by many, but not all, providers and card types.