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Delayed and manual capture

Learn about automatic, delayed, and manual capture of in-person payments.

Capture in Customer Area

You can also capture payments in your Customer Area. See Manage payments.

For payment methods that support separate capture, the payment is completed in two steps:

  1. Authorization: The payment details of the shopper are verified with the issuer, and the funds are reserved.
  2. Capture: The reserved funds are transferred from the shopper to your account.

By default, payments are captured automatically without a delay, immediately after authorization.

For payment methods that support separate authorization and capture, you can also capture the payment later. You can:

  • Set up delayed automatic capture for your merchant account. After a payment is authorized, there is a delay before the payment is captured automatically.

  • Use manual capture: you capture payments individually by making a request to the /payments/{paymentPspReference}/captures endpoint.
    Before you can use manual capture, you need to enable it at the merchant account level, or at the transaction level. Enabling manual capture at the transaction level lets you use automatic capture (with or without delay) by default for your account, and also manually capture specific payments.

Alipay and WeChat Pay do not support delayed captures or manual captures. With these payment methods, payments are captured immediately.

When you have set up a capture delay or manual capture, you can cancel the authorization on an uncaptured payment, if necessary. This releases the funds back to the shopper.

Delayed automatic capture

By default, payments are captured immediately after authorization. Setting up a delay between the authorization and the automatic capture of the payment gives you time to cancel the authorization. This is useful when, for example:

  • A shopper changes their mind soon after purchase.
  • Store staff realize they made a mistake after a payment is Approved.
  • The shopper needs to provide a signature and your staff need some time to verify it.

Without capture delay, you would need to issue a refund in some of these situations.

To be able to change capture settings, you need to have the following user role:

  • Merchant admin

To set up a capture delay:

  1. Log in to your Customer Area.

  2. Switch to your merchant account.

  3. Go to Settings > Account settings.

  4. In the General settings, next to POS capture delay, select the edit icon .

  5. From the dropdown list, select a capture delay of minutes, hours, or days before point-of-sale payments are automatically captured.

    We recommend selecting a delay of 2 hours.
    If you no longer want to use delayed capture, select Immediate.

  6. Select Save.

A payment that is automatically captured does not trigger a separate CAPTURE webhook. If you are using delayed automatic capture, consider enabling a CAPTURE webhook.

Manual capture

Depending on your business model, you may prefer to manually capture your point-of-sale payments instead of automatically. This lets you settle funds, for example:

  • On fulfillment: you capture the payment when an order is shipped. Or when the customer closes their bar tab or checks out of the hotel.
  • On return: when the shopper returns unwanted items from an order, you capture the payment for the items they keep.

We recommend capturing a payment within seven days of it being authorized. After this time, it is possible that the issuer cancels the authorization, which releases the funds back to the shopper.

With manual capturing, you can also cancel the authorization. This releases the funds back to a shopper, and can be used in case of issues shipping an order, or when a shopper returns their whole order.

To use manual capture, you first need to enable it. Then you need to send a capture request for the authorizations.

Partial manual capture

For partial captures, your account can be set to perform either:

In both cases, to partially capture a payment:

  • Make a manual capture request specifying:

    • amount.value: the partial amount that you want to capture. This amount must be smaller than the original authorized amount.

Single partial capture

For single partial captures, any unclaimed amount that is left over after partially capturing a payment is automatically cancelled.

For some schemes, you can flag each payment request as either a pre-authorization or a final authorization. For partial captures, we recommend that you flag the payment request as a pre-authorization. For more information, refer to Authorization types.

Multiple partial captures

When your account is enabled for multiple partial captures, the unclaimed amount after an initial capture is not automatically cancelled.

This is necessary for Unified Commerce scenarios where the shopper orders items in a physical store. If you have an order with multiple items to ship, each shipment would correlate to a partial capture.

Multiple partial captures are disabled by default. Contact our Support Team to enable this feature.

Enable manual capture

You can enable manual capture either for all payments for a merchant account or for an individual payment.

To be able to change capture settings, you need to have the following role:

  • Merchant admin

To enable manual capture:

  1. Log in to your Customer Area.
  2. Switch to your merchant account.
  3. Go to Settings > Account settings.
  4. In the General settings, next to POS capture delay, select the edit icon .
  5. From the dropdown list, select Manual.
  6. Select Save.

    If you no longer want to use manual capture, select Immediate as the POS capture delay, or select a capture delay.

  7. Set up webhooks. Manual capture is an asynchronous operation. We inform you whether this is successful with a CAPTURE webhook.
  8. Generate an API key. To make manual capture requests, you need to have an API key.

    If you are using cloud-based communications, you can use the existing API key that you use for Terminal API calls.

Capture a payment

When you have enabled manual capture, either for your account or for an individual transaction, you need to capture the payment as follows:

  1. From the transactionID field in the payment response , get the pspReference of the authorization you want to capture.

  2. Make a POST request to the /payments/{paymentPspReference}/captures endpoint, where paymentPspReference is the pspReference of the authorization you want to capture.

    In your request, include:

    Parameter Required Description
    merchantAccount -white_check_mark- The name of your merchant account that is used to process the payment.
    amount.value -white_check_mark- The amount in minor units (without a decimal point) being captured.
    To capture the full amount, specify a value equal to the requestedAmount you authorized in the payment request.
    To make a partial capture, specify a value less than the requestedAmount you authorized in the payment request. The remainder is released back to the shopper's card.
    amount.currency -white_check_mark- This must match the currency of the payment you're capturing.
    reference Your unique identifier for the capture operation. The reference field is useful to tag a partial capture for future reconciliation.

    The following example shows how to capture a EUR 25.00 payment authorization that has the pspReference WNS7WQ756L2GWR82.

    The request header must include the x-api-key parameter set to your API key.

  3. In the capture response, note the following:

    • paymentPspReference: the PSP reference of the authorization.
    • pspReference: the PSP reference associated with this capture request. This is different from the PSP reference of the authorization.
    • status: received. Your capture request will be processed asynchronously. You will receive the result in a webhook.

  4. Wait for the CAPTURE webhook to learn the outcome of the request.

CAPTURE webhook

When we have processed your capture request, we send you a webhook event with:

  • eventCode: CAPTURE.
  • originalReference: the PSP reference of the authorization.
  • pspReference: the PSP reference associated with the capture request.

  • success: indicates whether the capture request was successful. Possible values:

    • true: the capture request is valid (for example, the authorization has not expired, and the balance is available) and has been submitted to the bank/third-party processor. In most cases, this means that the funds will be transferred to your account. In rare cases the card scheme can still reject the capture, and you will receive a CAPTURE_FAILED webhook.
    • false: the capture request failed. The webhook event includes a reason field with a short description of the problem. Review the reason, fix the issue if possible, and resubmit the capture request.
{
   "live":"false",
   "notificationItems":[
      {
         "NotificationRequestItem":{
            "amount":{
               "currency":"EUR",
               "value":500
            },
            "eventCode":"CAPTURE",
            "eventDate":"2018-22T15:54:01+02:00",
            "merchantAccountCode":"YourMerchantAccount",
            "originalReference":"WNS7WQ756L2GWR82",
            "paymentMethod":"mc",
            "pspReference":"JDD6LKT8MBLZNN84",
            "reason":"",
            "success":"true"
         }
      }
   ]
}

For more information about the included fields, see the CAPTURE webhook reference.

Reasons for an unsuccessful request

When a capture request fails, you receive a CAPTURE webhook with success: false and the reason why the request failed. The next table shows the most common reasons.

reason Description
Transaction not found The capture failed because the pspReference is missing or incorrect. Check that the reference you provided is unique and matches exactly one pspReference.
Transaction is expired The authorization for this payment is expired. You can try to re-authorize the payment in your Customer Area.
This is a sale transaction, not possible to capture a smaller amount This payment method doesn't support separate captures.
Operation maximum period allowed: X days The capture operation can only be performed within X days from the date the payment was authorized.
Only possible to capture the full amount This payment method doesn't support partial captures.
Modification in different currency than authorisation The capture currency does not match the authorized payment currency.
Amount too low to be accepted by Card Network The capture amount is below the threshold permitted by the card scheme rules.
Insufficient balance on payment The requested capture amount is more than the balance on the payment.
Internal error Something unexpected happened on Adyen's end. Contact our Support Team.
Operation not available You do not have the required capture functionality enabled for this payment method. Contact our Support Team.
Operation failed The capture functionality failed for this payment method. Contact our Support Team.

The balance on the payment is the amount that remains from the original authorization. For example, if a transaction is authorized for EUR 10 but not captured, the balance on the payment is EUR 10. If the full amount is cancelled, or if the authorization expired, the remaining balance on the payment is EUR 0. If a transaction is authorized for EUR 50, and then partially captured for EUR 30, the remaining balance on the payment is EUR 20.

CAPTURE_FAILED webhook

In rare cases, a capture fails even after you received a CAPTURE webhook with success: true. The successful webhook event means that we sent the request to the card scheme, but the scheme can still reject the request at this point. This can even happen a few days after you submitted the capture request.

Most of the time Adyen can fix the issue, so that you will eventually receive the funds. Sometimes, however, you need to take action yourself. To learn why a capture can fail and what, if anything, you need to do in each case, refer to Reasons for failed capture.

When a capture fails, we inform you of this with a webhook containing:

  • eventCode: CAPTURE_FAILED
  • originalReference: the pspReference of the authorization.
  • pspReference: the pspReference of the capture request.

The webhook event contains the reason why the card scheme rejected the capture. You can also find the capture failure reason on the Payment details page in your Customer Area.

An overview of failed captures is available in your Payment accounting report.

Cancel an authorization

Cancel in Customer Area

You can also manually cancel uncaptured payments in your Customer Area. See Manage payments.

When you are using a capture delay or manual capture, you can cancel the authorization on an uncaptured payment using an API request from your POS app.

But before you can do that, you need to:

  • Set up webhooks. Canceling is an asynchronous operation. We inform you whether this is successful with a CANCELLATION webhook.
  • Generate an API key. To cancel authorisations from a POS app, the request header must include the x-api-key parameter set to your API key.

    If you are using cloud-based communications, you can use the existing API key that you use for Terminal API requests.

To cancel a payment that has been authorized but not captured yet:

  1. From the AUTHORISATION webhook, get the pspReference of the authorization you want to cancel.

  2. Make a POST request to the /payments/{paymentPspReference}/cancels endpoint, where paymentPspReference is the PSP reference of the authorization you want to cancel.

    If you're not sure whether the authorization has been captured, use the /payments/{paymentPspReference}/reversals endpoint instead.

    In your request, include:

    Parameter Required Description
    merchantAccount -white_check_mark- The name of your merchant account that is used to process the payment.
    reference Your reference for the cancel request.

    The following example shows how to cancel an authorization that has the pspReference XB7XNCQ8HXSKGK82.

    The request header must include the x-api-key parameter set to your API key.

  3. When you receive the /payments/{paymentPspReference}/cancels response, note:

    • paymentPspReference: the PSP reference of the authorization you want to cancel.
    • pspReference: Adyen's unique reference associated with this cancel request.
    {
    "merchantAccount": "YOUR_MERCHANT_ACCOUNT",
    "paymentPspReference": "XB7XNCQ8HXSKGK82",
    "pspReference" : "JDD6LKT8MBLZNN84",
    "reference": "YOUR_UNIQUE_REFERENCE",
    "status" : "received"
}

  4. Wait for the CANCELLATION webhook to learn the outcome of the cancel request.

CANCELLATION webhook

You receive the outcome of the cancel request asynchronously, in a webhook that includes :

  • eventCode: CANCELLATION.
  • originalReference: the PSP reference of the authorization.
  • pspReference: same as the pspReference in the /payments/{paymentPspReference}/cancels response.

  • success: indicates whether the cancel request was successful. Possible values:

    • true: the cancel request was successful.
    • false: the cancel request failed. The webhook event includes a reason field with a short description of the problem. Review the reason, fix the issue if possible, and resubmit the cancel request.
{
   "live":"false",
   "notificationItems":[
      {
         "NotificationRequestItem":{
            "amount":{
               "currency":"EUR",
               "value":500
            },
            "eventCode":"CANCELLATION",
            "eventDate":"2021-03-05T09:08:05+01:00",
            "merchantAccountCode":"YOUR_MERCHANT_ACCOUNT",
            "originalReference":"XB7XNCQ8HXSKGK82",
            "paymentMethod":"mc",
            "pspReference":"JDD6LKT8MBLZNN84",
            "reason":"",
            "success":"true"
         }
      }
   ]
}

For more information about the included fields, see the CANCELLATION webhook reference.

See also