When deciding how to manage your transactions you will need to know and understand the two terms below when making your decision:
- Auth or Reserve:
This term refers to the funds being reserved on a customer's credit card on a successful transaction. This means these funds are set aside and cannot be used by the customer, but not yet transferred to the merchant's account.
- Settle or Finalise:
This refers to the customer's authorised funds being debited from the credit card. These settled transaction funds will reflect in the merchant's account once the interbank settlement processes have run, which typically take anywhere between 1 -7 working days.
There are two ways to manage your transactions:
You will need to note that unsettled authorizations (RESERVE) are released by the cardholder's bank, typically after 7 days if not settled (FINALIZE). Once released by the cardholder's bank, requesting to Settle (FINALIZE) may fail and you will therefore be unable to receive payment against the authorization.
Therefore, if you have selected to process an upfront authorisation (RESERVE) request, please make sure that you either;
within 7 days of submitting the authorization request.