Final authorisations (API)

You can only process final authorisations with Mastercard-branded cards.

A final authorisation is used to seek authorisation for a transaction and reserve the funds on the customer’s account, in cases where the final amount to be debited from the customer is known at time of authorisation. By default, the funds reserved by final authorisations are typically settled within 24 hours, but can be deferred if needed. Mastercard mandate that final authorisations must be settled within 4 days.

Trust Payments will automatically cancel all outstanding final authorisations after 7 days if they have not been settled.

Final authorisations must meet the following criteria:

Failure to adhere to these conditions may incur a fine from Mastercard.
For full terms and conditions, please contact your acquiring bank.

Final authorisations are most useful when employed in the following scenarios:

• The final amount to be debited from the customer is not expected to change.
• Settlement is to be performed imminently.

To defer settlement, you will need to suspend the transaction. To settle the funds into your bank account, you will need to update the transaction to settlestatus “0” or “1”.

Requirements

You can only process final authorisations with Mastercard-branded cards.

Mastercard Europe have mandated that Mastercard and Maestro transactions processed with certain European acquiring banks must be flagged as either pre-authorisation or final authorisation. Such transactions are subject to acquirer-specific conditions.

 

Failure to adhere to these conditions may incur a fine from Mastercard.
For full terms and conditions, please contact your acquiring bank.

Processing final authorisations

Default behaviour

By default, authorisations are processed as final authorisations in cases where a distinction is required by the participating acquirer. If this default behaviour has been modified to process pre-authorisations by default, you can override this on a transaction-by-transaction basis by following the instructions below.

 

If you are not sure whether your site has been configured to process pre-authorisations or final authorisations, click here to learn how to check using MyST.

You will need to update the payload submitted within your JWT to include the additional field authmethod, with value “FINAL”, as shown below. When submitted, this overrides the default settings on your account.

The authmethod field can only be submitted in THREEDQUERY and AUTH requests.

If a value for the authmethod field is submitted to the acquirer during authorisation, it will always be returned within the response.

Request example

The following payload example includes the authmethod field to override the account’s default setting to process a final authorisation:

{"payload":{"accounttypedescription":"ECOM","baseamount":"1050","currencyiso3a":"GBP","sitereference":"test_site12345","requesttypedescriptions":["THREEDQUERY","AUTH"],"authmethod":"FINAL"},"iat":1559033849,"iss":"jwt.user"}

{"payload":{"accounttypedescription":"ECOM","baseamount":"1050","currencyiso3a":"GBP","sitereference":"test_site12345","termurl":"https:\/\/payments.securetrading.net\/process\/payments\/mobilesdklistener","requesttypedescriptions":["THREEDQUERY","AUTH"],"authmethod":"FINAL"},"iat":1559033849,"iss":"jwt.user"}