Incremental authorization

A pre-authorization is an authorization for an amount greater than zero that meets one or more of the following three conditions:

Pre-authorization is requested for initial amount.
Additional (incremental) pre-authorizations may be requested.
Transaction may no longer be completed for reasons other than technical failure (such as
telecommunications failure or terminal failure) or lack of full issuer approval.
For example, the transaction might not be completed when the cardholder is offered the choice to
complete the transaction with another payment means at a later time, such as, when
checking out of a hotel or returning a rental car, or when the goods ordered by the
cardholder might be later found to be out of stock.

Incremental preauthorization provides a means to associate incremental preauthorizations to a
single clearing presentment. It's a common practice used by merchants when the final transaction amount isn't known upfront.

This practice involves submitting additional preauthorizations as more information about the transaction amount becomes available, ultimately settling all charges in a single clearing transaction.

These standards provide a method for Issuers, with certainty, to associate incremental preauthorizations to a single presentment. It provides Issuers with the means to more effectively manage cardholder open-to-buy balances.

Incremental authorization on Banking.live

Once Banking.Live receives an authorization, validations are perfomed to check the validity and authenticity of the transaction.

Banking.Live identify's if an authorization is a preauthorization/incremental authorization by using logic and specific Data Element identifiers.

Once the pre-auth completion advice message (0120) is received, the platform then recalculates the blocked amount based on the final amount received on the completion advice message.

Paymentology will decline incremental authorizations with an appropriate response code based on:

Validity of preauthorization
- For Mastercard: decline the incremental authorization if received 30 or more days after the last incremental auth.
- For Visa: decline the incremental authorization if received 7 or more days after the initial pre-auth transaction. The exception is for the merchants: Cruise Line | Lodging Merchant | Vehicle Rental Merchant - for these merchants, it's 31 or more days.