A pre-authorisation reserves an estimated amount of funds on a card before the final amount is known and captured. The reserved amount is not moved until the merchant captures the transaction, and the hold expires after a set window if no capture happens. Pre-auths are common where the final amount can vary, such as hotel rooms, car hire and deposits.
Travel payments glossary
Pre-authorisation
An authorisation that reserves funds on a card before the final amount is captured.
Why it matters in travel
Pre-authorisations are used in travel for deposits ahead of balance capture, security holds on hire-car and hotel desks, and incremental charges during a stay. Tracking which pre-auths are open, expiring or captured is part of healthy travel-payments operations.
A pre-authorisation that expires before capture is a recovery problem dressed up as a customer-experience problem. The customer believes they have paid the deposit, the agent believes the booking is held, but the underlying authorisation has lapsed and the funds are no longer reserved. Without a system to detect and refresh, the operator finds out the day the balance does not capture.
The travel businesses that handle pre-auths well refresh ahead of expiry, capture at the right moment, and surface anything that has stayed in pre-auth state longer than the booking lifecycle expects. The businesses that do not have a small but persistent leak of bookings where the customer thought they were paid and the operator thought the same, until the supplier deadline arrived.
How felloh helps
felloh tracks pre-auth, capture and expiry against the booking ledger so the customer-facing card balance and the merchant-side state stay in sync without manual review.
Where this shows up in risk and disputes.
Pre-authorisation touches more than one workflow at felloh. Start with the pages most travel teams reach for next.
- Financial Control
Control refunds, exceptions, supplier exposure and payment risk against the same booking record.
Explore - Financial Protection Data
Authentication, settlement, protected funds and refund history kept with the booking for dispute defence.
Explore - Payment Optimisation
Acceptance, decline and authentication evidence so you can act on the patterns that matter.
Explore
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Connect the dots.
See how payments, settlement, refunds and reporting evidence connect around every booking.