Authorizations on recurring payments

Understanding authorizations (pre-auths) and your customer's payment card

Massimo Sirolla avatar
Written by Massimo Sirolla
Updated over a week ago

When you add a customer's payment card to their profile, an authorization may occur for the amount of $1 on the customer's card.

What is an authorization? (also known as card authorization, preauthorization, or pre-auth)

An authorization is NOT a charge to the customer's payment card. An authorization is a hold initiated with a debit card or credit card, rendering the balance ($1) as unavailable until a transaction is cleared.

The hold of $1 will only last for a few days until such time that it will be removed. Again, this is not a charge to the card.

There is no real requirement to explain this process to a customer, a pre-authorization or authorization is standard practice for all payment companies wanting to ensure a high success rate for payments or recurring payments. The customer will likely not even know there is a hold of $1 on their account and it will be released up to 7 days at the latest.

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