Glossary
Authorisation
Authorisation is the first step of a card payment: the merchant's request, sent through the acquirer and the scheme, asks the issuer whether the card is valid and the funds available. The issuer answers with an approval code or a decline reason and, on approval, places a hold on the cardholder's funds for the amount. No money moves yet: the hold becomes a debit through capture and clearing, or is released by a void or by expiry.
What the request carries
The amount and currency, the card number or token, the expiry date, the security code where allowed, the 3-D Secure result, the merchant’s category and descriptor, indicators for recurring and merchant-initiated transactions, and device and address data for the issuer’s risk engine. Each missing or wrong field lowers the chance of approval.
Holds and their lifetime
A hold reserves the cardholder’s funds and reduces their available balance. Schemes set how long a merchant may wait before capturing, from a few days for most retail to longer windows for hotels and car rental; a hold not captured in time expires and the merchant must authorise again. Partial approvals, where the issuer approves less than requested, are allowed for some card types and must be handled by the checkout.
On the platform
Tranzify sends the authorisation through the client’s terminal at the acquirer with the data the adapter requires, writes the request and the answer to the journal with the card data hidden, classifies the answer as approved, soft or hard decline, and cascades or finishes the payment accordingly; the payment trace shows every step.
Updated: 2026-11-08