When viewing transactions in the ESTHER Platform or My Purchases page, you may see greyed out transactions. These are called pre-auth transactions.

What does a pre-auth transaction mean?

When you buy something with a card, sometimes the full amount of money isn't taken out of your account right away. Instead, an amount is held back from your card balance, which is called “pre-authorization”. This is like a temporary "hold" on your money to make sure you have enough funds to cover the purchase.

The actual amount spent for the purchase might take a few days to update, which is called “settlement”. This is when the bank takes the final amount of money from your account for the purchase. Settlement could result in a different final amount being taken from your account than the first pre-authorized amount.

For example, if you made a purchase for $50 and the pre-authorized amount was $60, the settlement would update the purchase amount to the correct $50. In some cases, settlement may even “reverse” the transaction completely which means the “held” amount will be available again on your card balance.

“Pre-authorized” transactions are used a lot by stores and merchants, examples can include automated gas stations (who want to make sure you have enough money to pay for the gas you put in a car) and restaurants (where tipping can change the amount on your card).