cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

How do I verify credit card and funds without placing a pending charge on the card?

There has got to be a way to verify the credit card works and they have enough funds for the order without placing a 30 day pending charge on the credit card.  We are getting a lot of angry customers calling about these pending charges on their credit card.

 

We have 2 steps in our checkout process.  The first step is the verify where the customer enters their CC info and billing address and it verifies the card and tells them that.  Then they click on "Submit Order" and it captures the authorized/pending transaction. 

 

So if the customer has an order and goes through and verifies their card.  Well, sometimes the customer must change their mind or get an error or something.  Now if they do not do anything else, that pending charge just sits out there looking to the customer like they will get charged for an order they never placed.

 

If they do come back through the checkout, I have the pending transaction ID stored in the session, so I void that transaction and start a new pending/auth transaction for the amount of the order.

 

I must be doing something wrong.  What are my options here?  I know all the big stores can ring up orders online without placing 30 day pending charges on customer's cards.

Thanks

Mike

dmikester1
Contributor
5 REPLIES 5

 

Hi dmikester1,

 

When you run an authorize only transaction you are putting a hold on that authorized amount, basically you have a set time limit on how long you can put a hold on this amount. By default it is 30 days (the longest) but it can be shorter than 30 days depending on the customer’s issuing bank. After that, the authorization will expire and you will need to resubmit a new authorization if you did not capture it based on the time limit set by the issuer.

 

Running an authorization will hold the money against the customer’s card so you are guaranteed to have that funds available. There is not a way around this because an authorization will always hold the amount against the customer's available balance.

 

Thanks,

Joy

Joy
Administrator Administrator
Administrator
Thank you for the reply. This is still quite frustrating. We are getting tons of calls from people complaining about being charged more than once when it is just a pending charge. We got one call from a lady who complained about 3 charges on her debit card and when I looked in Authorize, she had one successful, one was declined, and one was voided. Why would she still see 3 charges in her account?

Don't see an option to edit my previous post.  But I have another question.  Can I check that all the credentials of the card and billing address are correct without putting a pending charge on the card?

Don't see an option to edit my previous post.  But I have another question.  Can I check that all the credentials of the card and billing address are correct without putting a pending charge on the card?

 

No. because to verify it, it have to go thru the processor, to the buyer issuer bank

http://www.authorize.net/resources/howitworksdiagram/

Also you can only edit your previous post within a centain time, after that is only allow you to delete.

 

 

We got one call from a lady who complained about 3 charges on her debit card and when I looked in Authorize, she had one successful, one was declined, and one was voided. Why would she still see 3 charges in her account?

That the issuer bank. Authorize.net have nothing to do with that, they do what you tell them to do, did the 3(or 4 if you include the voided) transaction.


@dmikester1 wrote:

Can I check that all the credentials of the card and billing address are correct without putting a pending charge on the card?


Yes, with an auth_only transaction for $0.00. Zero Dollar Authorizations provide merchants with an effective means of validating account numbers and other authentication elements such as CCV and AVS.