Expiration date for credit card transactions

kmlawn · #1 (**permalink**) 04-09-2007, 11:13 PM

I use Paypal Pro integrated into my shopping cart for our merchant processing www.greatroomsdecor.com. All transactions are run as authorizations, and we then go in to Paypal and capture the funds when we ship the product. All of the authorizations expire within 30 days if not captured....my question is, is this standard with all merchant processors?
We have some products that require long lead times and would like to hold on the capture until closer to ship time.
The problem is, our cart does not store the entire credit card number, nor can we get it from paypal, so we either have to take the funds early, or let them expire and contact the customer for their credit card number to re-run at shipping time.
I have been happy with Paypal, but wondering if switching might alleviate this problem for us.
Thanks for any insight.

stymiee · #2 (**permalink**) 04-10-2007, 10:50 AM

Your merchant account provider won't offer this service as they just dop the processing. Your software, in your case gateway, would need to support this feature. I am not sure if Authorize.Net supports it or not and it is a very good question. I think an email to their support department might be in order to find out.

SG14 · #3 (**permalink**) 04-11-2007, 03:18 AM

Hello,

By default most payment processors initially set transactions as 'authentication only'. It depends on API, but often there is also an option to set transactions as "authentication&capture".

Actually, a lot of shopping carts support capture method configuration for payment systems. So for example you can set to authcapture type for transactions processed via Authorize.NET, LinkPoint or even PayPal. X-cart is very good example of such functionality.

But please note that certified integrations (I mean with cart software) of some payment systems may require special behavour/functionality which regulates such actions.

kmlawn · #4 (**permalink**) 04-11-2007, 10:33 AM

Thanks, we actually like the authorization system, since many of our products don't ship out immediately, we don't like to charge the customer until they do.

My primary question is regarding the 30 day time limit... for any of you who use merchant gateways besides Paypal, once the auth has been processed, how long do you have to capture the funds before they expire?

Are there any gateways that allow longer than 30 days to capture on an auth, or is this time period dictated by credit card companies or a law or something?

Thank you!