Pre-authorized Payments

Pre-authorized payments enable you to block (pre-authorize) the funds on customer’s debit/credit card, instead of collecting them. The funds are blocked for 4 days. During that time you can either collect, or release (=unblock) the payment. Pre-authorized payments are suitable for situations, when during the purchasing process there’s no guarantee that the goods will be available later.

Our tip: Pre-authorized payments are activated on test (sandbox) enviroment. If you want to have your pre-authorized payments functionality active on pruduction enviroment please contact GoPay customer support first.

Setting up a pre-authorized payment

You can set up the pre-authorized payment with a REST API request, which sets the value of the parameter to true. After the payment is created, the object describing the payment status and parameters is returned. The gw_url parameter is included in this API response, which you can use in order to initialize the payment gateway - either the inline, or redirect option.

The following payment status is AUTHORIZED, after the customer makes an authorized payment. We will inform the marketplace about the payment status update, sending an automatic HTTP/GET notification to the notification URL address, which is passed at the moment of setting up the payment. For further information about notifications please see the How Do I Integrate the Payment Gateway? article.

Charge of pre-authorized payment

You can fully collect the pre-authorized payment with the API request which collects the blocked funds from the customer’s account. After that, the API request credits these funds to the GoPay Merchant Account.

You can also collect the pre-authorized payment only in smaller part of amount via partial charge of pre-authorized payment request. In this case the original parameters of the payment are updated via new API calling. The rest of amount is automatically released (unblocked) back to the customer's payment card.

The following payment status is PAID. A standard HTTP/GET notification will inform you about the payment status update.

Cancelling a pre-authorized payment

In case the goods aren’t available, or the customer can’t be provided with the service, it’s necessary to cancel the pre-authorized payment with the API request. The blocked funds on the customer’s account are released (unblocked) from the customer’s account and then the following payment status is CANCELED. A standard HTTP/GET notification will inform you about  the payment status update.