Place an extended hold on an online card payment

Extended authorizations have a longer authorization validity period, which allows you to hold customer funds for longer than standard authorization validity windows. For most card networks, the default authorization validity period is 7 days for online payments and 2 days for in-person Terminal payments, whereas extended validity periods can go up to 30 days depending on the card network. For more information about authorization validity windows, see place a hold on a payment method.

Availability

When using extended authorizations, be aware of the following restrictions:

• They’re only available with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover.
• Certain card brands have merchant category restrictions. Refer to the network availability table below.
• This page describes extended authorizations for online card payments. For in-person card payments using extended authorizations, refer to the Terminal documentation.
• Checkout doesn’t support extended authorizations.

Availability by card network and merchant category

Every card network has different rules that determine which payments have extended authorizations available, and how long they’re valid. The following table shows the validity windows and transaction types that extended authorization is available for using Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. However, we recommend that you rely on the capture_before field to confirm the validity window for any given payment because these rules can change without prior notice.

Best Practices

Customers see their funds held longer when you use extended authorizations. Use clear statement descriptors to avoid increased disputes from unrecognized payments.

Request an extended authorization

By default, an authorization for an online card payment is valid for 7 days for most card networks. To increase the validity period, you can request an extended authorization by using if_available with the request_extended_authorization parameter.

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/payment_intents \
  -u "
sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc
:" \
  -d amount=1099 \
  -d currency=usd \
  -d payment_method=pm_card_visa \
  -d confirm=true \
  -d capture_method=manual \
  -d "expand[]"=latest_charge \
  -d "payment_method_options[card][request_extended_authorization]"=if_available

Rely on the capture_before field to confirm the validity window for a given payment. The validity window won’t change after the PaymentIntent is confirmed. To determine if the authorization is extended after confirming the PaymentIntent, look at the extended_authorization.status field on the associated Charge.

// PaymentIntent response
{
  "id": "pi_xxx",
  "object": "payment_intent",
  "amount": 1000,
  "amount_capturable": 1000,
  "amount_received": 0,
  "status": "requires_capture",
  ...
  // if latest_charge is expanded
  "latest_charge": {
      "id": "ch_xxx",
      "object": "charge",
      "payment_method_details": {
        "card": {
          "amount_authorized": 1000,
          "capture_before": 1696524701,
          "extended_authorization": {
              "status": "enabled", // or "disabled"
          }
        }
      }
      ...
    }
  ...
}

Test your integration

Use any of the below Stripe test cards with any CVC and future expiration date to request extended authorizations while in test mode. If extended authorizations are available on payments for a given network in test mode, they’re also available in live mode.