Businesses in specific industries, especially hospitality, car rental, fuel, and travel, often don’t know the final amount when the first authorization is made. An estimated authorization allows you to place an authorization hold for an estimated amount that can be adjusted later.

Upon an estimated authorization request being received, this feature allows you to adjust the authorized amount, but only within the validity period of the estimated authorization. If the cardholder spends more than expected, you can get additional authorization using an incremental authorization request.

Industries like hospitality, car rental, fuel, and travel often need to adjust the initial authorization due to unknown final amounts, using estimated and incremental authorizations.

• Car rental
  A car rental agency estimates an authorization amount that includes the rental fee, taxes, and mileage rates. However, when the vehicle is returned, the agency needs to increase the authorization amount to cover additional fees, such as insurance or extra services.

• Hotel services
  A hotel places an initial authorization for the room cost. If the guest uses additional services, such as meals or spa treatments, the hotel places incremental authorizations to cover the extra costs and adjusts the authorized amount accordingly.

• Online tourism
  A tourism company estimates an authorization for the initial booking. If the customer adds excursions or other services during the trip, the company issues incremental authorizations to cover the additional costs, increasing the total authorized amount.

Authorization type

Authorization types authorization_type define how payment amounts are approved, allowing you to manage transactions based on whether the final amount is known upfront or needs to be increased later.

• Final final authorization refers to the process where the final purchase amount is known at the time the purchase begins.
  By default, Solidgate handles all card payment requests as final authorizations.
• Estimated estimated authorization where the final transaction amount is not immediately known.
  An estimated authorization must be a genuine estimate and must not be an arbitrary amount. This type of authorization allows you to seek an estimated authorization when the final amount of a transaction is not known at the time a purchase begins, and to use incremental authorizations when the initially estimated amount is insufficient.
• Incremental incremental authorization increases the total authorized amount.
  You can request multiple incremental authorizations for a single transaction if the initially authorized amount is insufficient.

In Guide
Review financial entries report for detailed transaction-level breakdown of financial records. financial entries report, authorization fees record_type_key AUTHORIZATION_FEE are charged for each authorization attempt within a single order. Thus, there is one fee for the initial estimated authorization and an additional fee for each incremental authorization.

Requirements

Before implementing estimated and incremental authorization, consider the following requirements, limitations, and preparations.

Not all connectors support estimated and incremental authorizations.

Payment configuration

Configure estimated and incremental authorizations in two steps. First, create an estimated authorization, then increase or decrease the authorized amount using incremental authorization.

Guide
Simulate payments to test your integration before launching in production. Test estimated and incremental authorization to ensure your integration handles authorization types correctly.

Step 1. Estimated auth

To perform an estimated authorization, configure the payment request with the following settings:

• authorization_type field to estimated
• type field to auth

The authorization_type field with estimated value is valid in the one-time payment request:

• Charge API
• Google Pay API
• Apple Pay API
• Recurring API
• Resign API
• Create payment page API
• Create payment link API
• Guide
  Understand how to integrate the payment form into your product. Create payment form
• Guide
  Efficiently integrate a resign payment form with saved card details. Resign payment form

Step 2. Incremental auth

Increment authorization operation allows you to increase the authorized amount for an existing estimated transaction.

To perform an incremental authorization, configure the request with order_id , returned in the response to the estimated auth request and amount , which represents the increment value to add to the initial authorization.

• Increment auth API
  Maximum 50 increments allowed per order.

This operation creates a auth transaction with authorization_type incremental within the same order.