Skip to main content

Authorize and Capture Payments

In some scenarios, your checkout process may collect and pre-authorize a purchase before the customer completes checkout. This is useful when you want to run a customer and card information against your fraud rules, enable pre-orders, or a multi-step checkout process.

Now that you have completed the Collect Cards guide, let's authorize and capture a card payment.

Getting Started​

To get started, you will need a PublicSquare Account.

Get your Secret Key​

Next you will need your Secret Key. Go to your Developers section and click Reveal for your Secret Key and copy the value.

Save the Secret Key as it will be used in the next steps of this guide.

Authorize the Payment​

We will need to use the information from the previously collected card to create a new payment.

For example, given you have a previously collected card:

{
  "id": "card_AjkCFKAYiTsjghXWMzoXFPMxj",
  "account_id": "acc_B518niGwGYKzig6vtrRVZGGGV",
  "environment": "test",
  "cardholder_name": "John Smith",
  "last4": "4242",
  "exp_month": "12",
  "exp_year": "2025",
  "fingerprint": "CC2XvyoohnqecEq4r3FtXv6MdCx4TbaW1UUTdCCN5MNL",
  "created_at": "2024-06-30T01:02:29.212Z",
  "modified_at": "2024-06-30T01:02:29.212Z"
}

Create Authorized Payment​

We need to make a call to Create Payment endpoint passing "capture": false in the request body:

Create a Payment
curl 'https://api.publicsquare.com/payments' \
-X 'POST' \
-H 'X-API-KEY: <SECRET_API_KEY>' \
-H 'IDEMPONTENCY-KEY: '09ec2c87-7fb8-44ca-bb18-5c71a76974da' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{
  "amount": 1000,
  "currency": "USD",
  "capture": false,
  "payment_method": {
    "card": "card_AjkCFKAYiTsjghXWMzoXFPMxj"
  },
  "customer": {
    "first_name": "John",
    "last_name": "Smith",
    "email": "john.smith@email.com"
  },
  "billing_details": {
    "address_line_1": "111 Test St.",
    "city": "Des Moines",
    "state": "IA",
    "postal_code": "51111",
    "country": "US"
  }
}'
The amount is provided in cents. 1000 is the equivalent of $10.00
The IDEMPONTENCY-KEY header can be passed to protect against duplicate payments being processed.

Authorized Payment Response​

You should see a payment response with a requires_capture status similar to:

Authorized Payment Response
{
  "id": "pmt_2YKewBonG4tgk12MheY3PiHDy",
  "account_id": "acc_B518niGwGYKzig6vtrRVZGGGV",
  "environment": "test",
  "status": "requires_capture",
  "transaction_id": "trx_95rvMJvAVeG68W4NtLdfkN3LG",
  "amount": 0,
  "amount_charged": 0,
  "amount_capturable": 1000,
  "amount_refunded": 0,
  "refunded": false,
  "currency": "USD",
  "payment_method": {
    "card": {
      "id": "card_AjkCFKAYiTsjghXWMzoXFPMxj",
      "cardholder_name": "John Smith",
      "last4": "4242",
      "exp_month": "12",
      "exp_year": "2025",
      "brand": "visa",
      "avs_code": "Y",
      "cvv2_reply": "M",
      "fingerprint": "CC2XvyoohnqecEq4r3FtXv6MdCx4TbaW1UUTdCCN5MNL"
    }
  },
  "customer": {
    "id": "cus_7Ay5mcUXAxwrN6wQEQUVEHBCJ",
    "first_name": "John",
    "last_name": "Smith",
    "email": "john.smith@email.com",
  },
  "billing_details": {
    "address_line_1": "111 Test St.",
    "city": "Des Moines",
    "state": "IA",
    "postal_code": "51111",
    "country": "US"
  },
  "shipping_address": {
    "address_line_1": "111 Colorado Ave.",
    "address_line_2": "Apt 403",
    "city": "Des Moines",
    "state": "IA",
    "postal_code": "51111",
    "country": "US"
  },
  "fraud_decision": {
    "decision": "accept"
  },
  "transaction": {
    "id": "trx_95rvMJvAVeG68W4NtLdfkN3LG",
    "account_id": "acc_B518niGwGYKzig6vtrRVZGGGV",
    "environment": "test",
    "status": "requires_capture",
    "amount": 1000,
    "fee_amount": 0,
    "net_amount": 1000,
    "currency": "USD",
    "type_id": "pmt_2YKewBonG4tgk12MheY3PiHDy",
    "type": "payment",
    "processor": "nuvei",
    "created_at": "2024-06-30T01:02:29.212Z",
    "modified_at": "2024-06-30T01:02:29.212Z"
  },
  "created_at": "2024-06-30T01:02:29.212Z",
  "modified_at": "2024-06-30T01:02:29.212Z"
}

If the payment authorization was declined by the processor or rejected because of fraud decisioning rules, you will see a payment status of rejected or declined. These payments cannot be captured.

Capture the Payment​

Using the authorized payment from the previous step, we now need to make a call to Capture Payment endpoint:

Capture a Payment
curl 'https://api.publicsquare.com/payments/capture' \
-X 'POST' \
-H 'X-API-KEY: <SECRET_API_KEY>' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{
  "payment_id": "pmt_2YKewBonG4tgk12MheY3PiHDy",
  "amount": 1000
}'

You can capture up to, but not exceeding, the original authorized payment amount. If no amount is passed, the full authorized amount of the payment will be captured.

Captured Payment Response​

You should see a payment response with a successful status similar to:

Captured Payment Response
{
  "id": "pmt_2YKewBonG4tgk12MheY3PiHDy",
  "account_id": "acc_B518niGwGYKzig6vtrRVZGGGV",
  "environment": "test",
  "status": "successful",
  "transaction_id": "trx_95rvMJvAVeG68W4NtLdfkN3LG",
  "amount": 1000,
  "amount_charged": 1000,
  "amount_capturable": 0,
  ...
  "transaction": {
    "id": "trx_95rvMJvAVeG68W4NtLdfkN3LG",
    "account_id": "acc_B518niGwGYKzig6vtrRVZGGGV",
    "environment": "test",
    "status": "successful",
    "amount": 1000,
    "fee_amount": 0,
    "net_amount": 1000,
    "processor": "nuvei",
    "processor_id": "7110000000010554769"
    ...
  },
  ...
}

Conclusion​

Authorize and capturing payments also works with ACH payments using a bank account payment method. See our Process ACH payments guide to see how to collect bank accounts and process ACH payments following similar steps in this guide.

Now that we have seen how to authorize and capture payments with a collected card, we may need to manage the payment or view information about the payment. Follow these guides to learn more: