Card Payment Processing Cycle & Timeline - Canada
- Miles Graves
When a card payment (Sale) is initially submitted to the Payrix Platform the details are immediately sent to the issuer for authorization, including fund availability, AddressVerification and CVV results. At this point, when the transaction is authorized by the issuer, the status in Payrix will change to Approved. If the issuer declines the authorization, the payment status will be set to Failed.
This process varies slightly if the Merchant is processing payments via an external terminal device.
Depending on your portfolio's Risk setting configuration, if the transaction returns AVS Unavailable/Mismatch or CVV Unavailable/Mismatch the payment may be reversed and will reflect a Failed status in Payrix. If this occurs, you will see a Related Transaction entry offsetting the original payment amount (Reverse Authorization) which will prevent the transaction from settling and no funds will be sent by the issuer.
Once a card transaction is approved, it will be included in the Merchant’s daily batch to be Captured and then Settled, and for the funds to become available to them in their Payrix Available Balance.
What is a “daily batch” and what does it mean?
A Merchant’s daily approved transactions are all sent simultaneously at the end of the business day to the processing bank to be Captured & Settled (i.e. to be finalized, and for the funds to be exchanged between the cardholder’s bank and Payrix so that the Merchant can receive a payout to their bank account).
Thus, any payments processed between the proceeding batch close and the current batch close are considered the Merchant’s “daily batch.”
In Payrix, there are two batch cutoff times. The first batch cut-off occurs at 7 PM and then a second batch cutoff at 9:30 PM EST. When the first batch is submitted all transactions processed between 9:31 PM ET the previous day through 7 PM ET on the current day will go from Approved to Captured. When the second batch is submitted, transactions processed between 7:01 PM - 9:30 PM will go from Approved to Captured.
Although both batches will be Settled by the processing bank at the same time, which batch cutoff a specific payment was part of is relevant if the Merchant would like to reverse or refund the transaction.
When a payment status is Approved the Merchant can reverse is by Cancelling or Voiding the transaction (Reverse Auth). However, once a payment is Captured is must be refunded in order to reverse the funds back to the cardholder. You can find more information about this distinction in the Refunds section.
Regardless of which of these two batches a transaction is a part of, they will all be Settled by the processing bank at the same time. This generally occurs approximately thirty minutes after the second daily batch closes. Meaning, at approximately 10 PM ET each night the Merchant’s daily transactions will update to the Settled status and the funds will become available in their Payrix Available Balance.
How long after a card payment is submitted will the funds be added to the Merchant’s Available Balance?
Generally, the money from a card payment will be added to the Merchant’s Payrix Available Balance at approximately 10 PM ET on the same evening that the transaction was submitted. Meaning, any payment submitted between 9:31 PM ET of the preceding day and 9:30 PM ET on the current day, will show up in the Available Balance at 10 PM ET.