After an authorization is approved and is captured, the status on the authorization is set to closed and a Transaction object is created. This normally happens within 24 hours; however hotels, airlines, and car rental companies are able to capture up to 31 days after authorization.
When an authorization is captured, two things happen.
The status on the authorization is set to closed, releasing the purchase amount held by that authorization. A balance transaction of type issuing_authorization_release is created to represent this.
Spending controls, real time authorization controls, and card status (whether a card is active or not) don’t apply for capture. They can be used to determine whether authorizations are approved, but captures for approved authorizations always succeed.
Handling other transactions
In addition to regular transactions, there are a few other cases that you should be ready to handle.
Refunds are transactions with type of refund.
When we create a transaction representing a refund or credit, we try to link it to the original payment authorization. Refunds aren’t necessarily tied to the original payment transaction or authorization, so linking them is an inexact science. As a result, we might link to an unrelated authorization or be unable to link to an authorization at all (for example, if the card is credited rather than refunded). In these cases, the authorization field of the transaction is set to null, and the transaction won’t be linked to the authorization. We process all refunds and credits the same way, regardless of their linkage to a payment authorization.
In rare cases, a refund might need to be reversed. This typically occurs when duplicate refunds were processed and one needs to be reversed. Refund reversals are represented as transactions with type set to refund and a negative amount field (the amount field is positive for standard refunds).
For example, if a merchant accidentally processes two refunds of 17.70 USD for the same transaction, the system creates a refund reversal transaction with an amount of -17.70 USD (or a similar amount, accounting for foreign exchange differences) to reverse one of the duplicate refunds.