🛀What's a pending transaction?

What it means when you have a transaction pending.

Updated over a week ago

Pending transactions can be :

-successful transactions that will be settled on Spendesk 1-4 days after in general.

-failed transactions (that will be deleted automatically, no action required)

-pre-authorizations (that will be deleted automatically, no action required)

-deposits (that will be deleted automatically, no action required, unless the supplier needs to charge it in the end)

What's a pending transaction?

When you make a payment, the merchant will always process the transaction in two steps ⬇️

Authorization

Keep in mind that this payment is not charged, or not charged "yet". Merchants use it to check whether your card is valid and sufficiently loaded with funds.

A new payment line should appear under the Payments tab in Spendesk, as a “pending transaction”.

Amount charged or cancelled

If the amount is charged correctly, the payment line will appear under your payments of the month.

Otherwise, the payment is cancelled by the merchant and the related payment line will stay in the Pending Transactions section temporarily. The authorization is left to expire and the line will disappear from Spendesk.

↪️ Keep in mind that it can take up to 18 days (most cases) or 32 days in rare cases for a transaction to expire which is why you are seeing it in the Pending transactions.

About Payment Authorizations:

Deposits

When it comes to deposits, merchant make a card authorization.

In Spendesk, you will notice a new Pending transaction line on your account.

Once the service has been paid for, the funds will be released and the related pending transaction will expire.

🚨 If a merchant has made a card authorization or charged your card, Spendesk isn't able to cancel the transaction: it's being processed by the supplier and they're the only ones able to cancel it.

We advise you to contact the merchant if needed. Feel free to reach out to our support team if you require any additional detail about any specific transaction.

Paying at an automatic gas station / fuel pump

When you try to pay at an automatic gas station, you may see that a much higher payment may appear under the Payments tab.

You won't be charged for what you didn't pay. The extra amount you see is linked to the specific way automatic gas stations deal with a payment:

  • When you use your card at a gas station, the merchant always checks that your card is sufficiently loaded with funds. They make an authorization request. Since the machine doesn't know in advance what you will really spend, the authorization is very often much higher than what you will be charged in the end. Example: 140 GBP instead of 36 (real amount paid).

  • In Spendesk, the authorization appears in real time, in the Payments tab > Pending transactions section.

  • The merchant then charges your card with the real amount of your payment.

  • In the Payments tab, the payment will appear in the payments of the month section with the correct amount.

  • As soon as the authorization expires (which can take up to 32 days, legal time granted to the merchant) the funds that were blocked by the merchant are released and back on your account. You'll be notified via e-mail.

This works the same way when paying for taxi companies. 🚕

Information display

Spendesk works like some bank accounts.

We display the following transactions:

  • Transactions being processed or refused by the merchant show up under the "Pending Transactions" section of your Payments tab.

  • Transactions that were charged by the merchant show up under the Payments of the month section of your Payments tab.

Pending transactions and receipts

There are 3 possible receipt situations:

  • transaction has gone through, you have added a receipt and so you're not getting the receipt reminder.

  • transaction has not gone through, and you didn't add a receipt so you're getting a receipt reminder. Use this article for some help.

  • transaction has been pre-authorized and then another charge happened on the account, so you are being asked 2x for a receipt. Add the receipt to both lines (and one of the lines will disappear within 1 to 32 days).

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