Authorization aging

When an authorization is approved, a temporary hold is placed on the cardholder's account to reserve the necessary funds.

Once this occurs, the next step in the transaction flow is settlement.

Settlement typically occurs within a specified timeframe agreed upon by the involved parties, ensuring the timely movement of funds and completion of the transaction process.

However, in the instance of delayed or failed settlement* the temporary hold may still remain on the authorized funds, limiting the cardholder's access to them.

*Delayed or failed settlement can occur due to various reasons such as technical issues, transaction reversals, insufficient funds, network congestion, compliance issues, merchant errors, and banking or financial institution problems.

Managing authorization aging

To address such instances, Banking.Live automates the identification and unblocking of authorizations that have not received settlements within designated timeframes.

For normal authorizations, the settlement period is typically set to 7 days, while pre-authorizations are 30 days. The auto authorization unblocking service runs daily at a scheduled time.

The service allows for additional configuration, including:

• Product-level configuration that allows these designated timeframes to be based on various parameters such as transaction type, Merchant Category Code (MCC) , and authorization mode.
• Flexibility to enable or disable auto unblocking for specific authorizations that meet defined parameters.

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To learn more on your specific configuration you can reach out to your Client Executive or contact us via our Customer Support platform.

Notifications

In the event an authorization has been unblocked by Banking.Live, a reversal advisement (0420) message is prepared to release the blocked amounts.

This message is visible via PayControl and FAST clients will receive a 0420: Reversal advisement message over FAST.

Identifying the message

The message will be a reversal advisement and:

• The authorization status will show as approved and then unblocked.
• The reversal advisement message will have the same transaction ID as the original authorization message.
• The Network field value on the message will be "PPWR". i.e. "Network": "PPWR".

Sample message

A sample message can be found under PayPower; Authorization aging/expiration advisement here.