Authorisation

Authorisation is the process by which the card issuer verifies the cardholder’s payment details and, if there are no reasons to decline (e.g. insufficient funds), reserves the amount for a set period.

An authorised payment can usually be handled in one of two ways:

• Voided: the hold is cancelled and the funds are released back to the cardholder.
• Captured: the funds are submitted for clearing and claimed from the cardholder’s account.

The example shown below demonstrates a Payment Session creation request that will automatically capture funds once the payment is authorised. This is the default behaviour.

{
  "amount": 54550,
  "currency": "GBP",
  "customerEmail": "test@mail.com",
  "captureFlow": "Automatic"  // Or omit this field entirely as Automatic is the default
}

However, for certain business models, it may be preferable, or necessary, to delay capture.

When a payment is authorised but not yet captured, the funds remain in the cardholder’s account. This offers greater flexibility to address scenarios such as fraud, stock issues, or order cancellations.

To create an authorise-only Payment Session, set captureFlow to Manual via the paymentSessionCreate endpoint as shown below:

{
  "amount": 54550,
  "currency": "GBP",
  "customerEmail": "test@mail.com",
  "captureFlow": "Manual"
}

The duration for which funds remain reserved depends on the card scheme involved. The following table shows how this varies per scheme:

If the payment is not captured within this timeframe, the authorisation will expire, and the reserved funds will be released back to the cardholder.

• To process an authorise-only payment, you can follow the steps outlined in the Initial Setup guide. Authorising payments does not require any particular SDK configuration.
• To capture an authorised payment, you can follow the steps outlined in the Capture guide.
• To void an authorised payment, you can follow the steps outlined in the Void guide.