Approve or decline a card payment held for review

Your card processor's fraud filter can hold a payment for review instead of approving it. When that happens at checkout, the order is still created, but on hold: nothing has been charged yet, the order will not be ordered or shipped, and the customer has not been sent an order confirmation. You decide on the order page. You do not need to go into Authorize.Net.

How you find out

• You get an email titled Payment held for review with the order number and amount, and a button that opens the order.
• The order shows PAYMENT HELD FOR REVIEW at the top, with the amount, the card and the transaction number. Its status is Do Not Ship Hold.

Approve or decline it

1. Open the order. If you are not sure about it, contact the customer first.
2. Click Approve payment to charge the card. The order moves to Pending and is processed like any other order, and the customer gets their order confirmation.
3. Or click Decline payment. The hold on the customer's card is released and nothing is charged. The order is cancelled as Payment Declined and its items go back into stock. The customer is not emailed, so contact them if you want them to try another card.

Each button asks you to confirm first. The result shows at the top of the order as soon as the page reloads.

If Authorize.Net says no

Approve payment asks Authorize.Net to approve the payment right then. If Authorize.Net refuses, a red message at the top of the order gives Authorize.Net's own reason, the order stays on hold, and nothing is charged. You can then decline it, or ask the customer for another card.

If you already handled it in Authorize.Net

If you approve or decline the payment in Authorize.Net instead, the store picks that up within about 10 minutes and updates the order the same way. A button pressed on an order that was already handled in Authorize.Net only records what Authorize.Net shows. Nothing is charged twice.

What the customer sees

After checkout the customer sees Order Received and a note that their payment is being reviewed, their card has not been charged yet, and they will get an email when it is approved. The note asks them not to place the order again, because each try puts another hold on their card.

Note: A payment split across two cards still does not create an order when one of the cards is held. You get an email, and you decline the held card in Authorize.Net under Suspicious Transactions to release the hold on the customer's card.