Glossary and terms about credit cardsHome » Credit Card Glossary

A B C D Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G F E List All

Authorization Only

Authorization Only (Auth Only) is a special type of sale transaction. It authorizes an amount on a customers card but the item does not settle until a later time, sometime several days or weeks.Once the authorization is submitted, a response comes back from the issuing bank with an approval or declined code. An authorization only will generally be deleted after a couple of weeks as it wasn't captured. If you processed an authorization only transaction and would like to finalize the sale, then you must process a capture only transaction using the original authorization code.