41 Operating your EFTPOS terminal
Other transaction types
Pre-authorisation
The pre-authorisation function allows you to authorise and hold funds on a customer’s credit card for a
period of up to seven days. A pre-authorisation will not debit a customer’s account until a completion
transaction is processed at a later date. Each ‘transaction’ consists of two parts: the pre-authorisation and
the completion.
This facility is only available for use in certain industries, such as hotels or lodgings.
Part one: pre-authorisation
A pre-authorisation transaction requests
verication from a customer’s card-issuing bank for
the full value of the purchase. The customer’s bank
will issue a successful pre-authorisation request
with a 6-digit authorisation number.
IMPORTANT
The card issuer determines how long the
pre-authorisation value is ‘held’ against the
customer’s account. This period of time is typically
three to ve days. After this, the authorisation
request expires and the business needs to issue
a new pre-authorisation request to begin the
transaction again.
Part two: completion
When processing the completion request, use the
following data to retrieve the pre-authorisation
transaction:
> the six-digit authorisation number
> the invoice number and amount
> the card number or date.
The amount of the completion request may not
exceed the pre-authorisation request by more than
15%. If it does, the transaction will be declined.
When a completion transaction is successful, its
value will be included in the end-of-day settlement
to your merchant account.
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