Pre-authorisation

A pre-authorisation (pre-auth) is a temporary hold placed on a customer's card or account for an estimated transaction amount, before the final amount is known. It is commonly used in industries where the final charge may differ from the initial estimate — such as last-mile delivery (where basket totals can change due to substitutions or weighted items), hotels (which hold a deposit against potential additional charges) and fuel stations. Traditional card pre-authorisations can take up to 30 days to release if voided incorrectly, creating working capital pressure. Stitch supports optimised pre-authorisation flows that enable voids within one to three days, and network tokenisation as an alternative that removes the time-limit constraint entirely.