# Payment Authorisation

Important
This page details a non-essential option for merchants who have already completed April integration using the **[direct API integration](/developer-portal/direct-integration-landing)** method.

If you are using an e-commerce platform such as Magento, Woocommerce or Salesforce, this section is not relevant to your integration of April.

Payment Authorisation, or *“pre-auth”*, allows a merchant to reserve funds from a checkout initiated payment in their customer’s account.
This delays the capture of funds in the payment, for up to a week, until an API request is made from your system.
The most common use for this is if a merchant’s products are not available in the short term and the merchant would prefer
to guarantee payment before shipping goods or providing services.

This function is only possible with **full payments**, and **not** payments in instalments.

Important
There is a strict 7-day limit for this function. After that time, the April API will not allow the funds to be captured.
Therefore, it is very important that the merchant’s integration does not assume that funds can always be captured and
is prepared to handle failed attempts to do so.

## Integrating Payment Authorisation via the April API

The [Pay Order](/openapi/april-public/orders/payorder) API features the optional parameter `authoriseOnly`.
When this is set to `true`, on a successful transaction the status of a payment will be `not_captured` rather than the usual `paid`,
as below:


```json
{
  "PayOrderComplete": {
    "transactionId": "tran_1234567",
    "transactionStatus": "not_captured",
    "amount": 1000,
    "currency": "AUD",
    "type": "payinfull"
  }
}
```

It’s important to verify the `transactionStatus` is as expected in your integration and that you persist the `transactionId`
for capturing the funds later.

## Capturing Funds

To capture previously authorised payments, use the [Update Transaction](/openapi/april-public/transactions/updatetransaction) `CaptureFunds` action.
The optional JSON field `captureAmount` can be set to an amount less than the original authorisation to capture less of the authorised amount,
as below, or omitted to capture the full amount.


```json
{
  "CaptureFunds": {
    "captureAmount": 1000
  }
}
```

`captureAmount` cannot be set to an amount greater than the authorised amount.

## Cancelling an Authorisation

Transactions made using Payment Authorisation can be cancelled before the funds are captured, releasing the funds in the customer’s account,
using the [Update Transaction](/openapi/april-public/transactions/updatetransaction) `CancelAuthorisation` action.
If successful, the `transactionStatus` on your transaction will be updated to `cancelled`.

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