Place a hold on a payment method

When you create a payment, you can place a hold on an eligible payment method to reserve funds that you can capture later. For example, hotels often authorize a payment in full before a guest arrives, then capture the money when the guest checks out. This is sometimes referred to as manual capture.

Authorizing a payment guarantees the amount by holding it on the customer’s payment method. If you’re using the API, the payment_method_details.card.capture_before attribute on the charge indicates when the authorization expires.

You need to capture the funds before the authorization expires. If the authorization expires before you capture the funds, the funds are released and the payment status changes to canceled. Learn more about statuses for asynchronous payments.

Authorization validity windows

The following tables outline validity windows for authorizing different transaction types.

Card-not-present transactions

Card-present transactions (in-person payments)

30-day authorization windows in Japan

If your account is based in Japan, you can hold JPY-denominated transactions from Visa, Mastercard, JCB, Diners Club, and Discover for up to 30 days. Non-JPY and American Express transactions expire after the standard 7-day window.

Payment method limitations

Before implementing, understand the following limitations for authorizing and capturing separately.

• Only some payment methods support separate authorization and capture. Some payment methods that support this include cards, Affirm, Afterpay, Cash App Pay, Klarna, and PayPal. Some payment methods that don’t support this include ACH and iDEAL. Read more about payment method feature support.

• Beyond what is outlined in the tables above, other payment methods have different rules and authorization windows:

  • Card payments: The amount is typically on hold for 7 days for online payments and 2 days for in-person Terminal payments (depending on the type of transaction and the card network). You can request an extended authorization for certain online and Terminal payment authorizations that are eligible for extended validity periods. Card networks may also restrict 1 USD authorizations you don’t intend to capture.
  • Affirm: If Affirm requires a down payment for very large order amounts, they charge the amount during authorization and refund if the payment isn’t captured. You then have 30 days to capture the payment balance.
  • Afterpay / Clearpay: During authorization, the customer pays the first repayment installment. Afterpay refunds the payment if it’s never captured. You then have 13 days to capture the payment balance.
  • Cash App Pay: Valid authorizations must be captured within 7 days to complete a payment.
  • Klarna: You must capture the charge by midnight of the 28th calendar day after the charge request, otherwise the authorization expires. For example, you’d need to capture a charge request at UTC 2020-10-01 14:00 by UTC 2020-10-29 00:00.
  • PayPal: Holds the amount for 10 days. Stripe automatically attempts to extend the hold for another 10 days, totalling 20 days. Your settlement preference might affect the authorization period. See separate authorization and capture for more information.

Use the Dashboard to authorize and capture

You can authorize a payment and capture funds separately without writing code.

1. In the Dashboard, create a new payment. Select One-time.
2. When you enter or select the payment method, select More options then Capture funds later.

The payment appears in your payments page as Uncaptured.

To capture the funds, go to the payment details page and click Capture.

Tell Stripe to authorize only

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u "
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
:" \
  -d "line_items[0][price]"=
"{{PRICE_ID}}" \
  -d "line_items[0][quantity]"=2 \
  -d mode=payment \
  -d ui_mode=custom \
  -d "payment_intent_data[capture_method]"=manual

Capture the funds

After the payment method is authorized, the PaymentIntent status transitions to requires_capture. To capture the authorized funds, make a PaymentIntent capture request. This captures the total authorized amount by default. To capture less or (for certain online card payments) more than the initial amount, pass the amount_to_capture option. A partial capture automatically releases the remaining amount. If attempting to capture more than the initial amount for an online card payment, refer to the overcapture documentation.

The following example demonstrates how to capture 7.50 USD of the authorized 10.99 USD payment:

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/payment_intents/pi_123/capture \
  -u "
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
:" \
  -d amount_to_capture=750

Although some card payments are eligible for multicapture, you can only perform one capture on an authorized payment for most payments. If you partially capture a payment, you can’t perform another capture for the difference. (Instead, consider saving the customer’s payment method details for later and creating future payments as needed.)

Card statements from some issuers and interfaces from payment methods don’t always distinguish between authorizations and captured (settled) payments, which can sometimes confuse customers.

Additionally, when a customer completes the payment process on a PaymentIntent with manual capture, it triggers the payment_intent.amount_capturable_updated event. You can inspect the PaymentIntent’s amount_capturable property to see the total amount that you can capture from the PaymentIntent.

Cancel the authorization

If you need to cancel an authorization, you can cancel the PaymentIntent.

Capture payment before authorization expires Private preview

You can instruct Stripe to automatically capture before authorization expires instead of manually triggering capture for card payment methods. Use automatic delayed capture to ensure you don’t miss capturing authorized payments. You can also specify a custom delay period from authorization to capture.

To enable automatic delayed capture, set capture_method as automatic_delayed on the PaymentIntent:

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/payment_intents \
  -u "
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
:" \
  -d amount=1099 \
  -d currency=usd \
  -d "payment_method_types[]"=card \
  -d "payment_method_options[card][capture_method]"=automatic_delayed

With this approach, Stripe captures your card payment before the authorization expires, triggering the capture about 6 hours before the expiry time. This serves as a backup process to ensure we capture authorized payments before expiration. You can still manually capture or cancel the PaymentIntent before it’s automatically captured.

You can specify a custom delay period for capture by including the capture_delay_days parameter. This parameter indicates the number of days to delay capture after successful authorization:

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/payment_intents \
  -u "
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
:" \
  -d amount=1099 \
  -d currency=usd \
  -d "payment_method_types[]"=card \
  -d "payment_method_options[card][capture_method]"=automatic_delayed \
  -d "payment_method_options[card][capture_delay_days]"=3

In this example, Stripe automatically captures the PaymentIntent 3 days after successful authorization. This is useful if you know the amount of time needed to perform actions between authorization and capture, while ensuring capture before authorization expires.