Answers to common questions about credit card payments on Toast — including declined cards, pre-authorization, refunds, chargebacks, and card fees.

Toast is the payment facilitator for your account. Toast works with several third-party financial services partners to process payments, but Toast is responsible for your payment processing operations and is your main point of contact. That includes onboarding, PCI compliance, pricing, settlements, risk management, and Customer Care.

You cannot process credit card transactions outside the point of sale when using Toast. Card transactions must run through Toast POS. In rare circumstances, Toast can facilitate an unlinked refund — contact Toast Customer Care to discuss whether your situation qualifies.

No, you cannot take a card payment for more than the balance due. The amount charged to a card cannot exceed what the guest owes on the check.

An "unknown" card type usually means the card is from a foreign processor or is a card type Toast does not yet recognize. Toast continually works to categorize new card types so reporting stays accurate.

The last four digits of a card number only appear on digital receipts when the card was dipped or tapped. Swiped cards do not show the last four digits on digital receipts sent later through Find Checks.

There are no upper or lower limits on transaction amounts you can process through Toast. However, orders around or above $4,000 may be reviewed by Toast's fraud team.

You may be able to process some international cards, but acceptance is not guaranteed. Whether the card runs depends on the issuing bank. There is no way to know in advance whether a specific international card will be accepted.

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The "card was declined" error means the guest's bank declined the transaction. The full error text reads, "Your credit card was declined. Please check that your credit card information is correct or use a different card." Declines can happen for many reasons — insufficient funds, a debit block, unusual activity, suspected fraud, spending limits, or a worn-out chip or magstripe.

Toast recommends:

For more guidance, see What can I do if a guest's card is declined?

Toast cannot reprocess a declined transaction. Toast card readers are PCI compliant, which means no cardholder information is stored beyond the card type and the last four digits, so the same card cannot be re-run from a declined attempt. To collect payment, take a new form of payment from the guest.

You cannot resubmit a card transaction that errored out during processing. The original transaction cannot be retried from the system. A new form of payment will need to be taken to collect what the guest owes.

If your location is in Offline Mode and a card is declined when you come back online, that same card cannot be reprocessed. Cards taken in Offline Mode are processed once your network or internet connection is restored, and any decline that occurs at that point is final. Confirm Toast is not experiencing a service disruption on the Toast Status page, confirm there is no known issue with your processor, and then collect a new form of payment from the guest. For more information, see Recover and Get Back Online After an Outage or Disruption.

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You cannot pre-authorize a card by selecting the Tab button. The Tab button only saves the cardholder's name to the check. To pre-authorize a card, the card must be dipped or tapped on the order screen. For setup instructions and feature details, see Configure and Use Card Pre-Authorization and Card Pre-Authorization FAQ.

When a pre-authorization is declined or expires, the hold is no longer valid and the final payment cannot be captured against it. A pre-authorization places a temporary hold on funds and is valid for 24 hours. If the 24-hour window passes before the check is closed, the authorization expires. To complete the transaction, take the guest's payment information again. For more details, see What do I do when a card pre-authorization is declined?.

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To adjust a card payment, see Adjust Credit Card Payments for step-by-step instructions covering tip adjustments, partial refunds, and amount changes before end-of-night batching.

You cannot move money from the Tip field to the Subtotal on a payment. An amount processed as a tip cannot be reclassified as a taxable item amount.

To disable a specific card brand, contact Toast Customer Care for assistance. This option is not configurable from Toast Web.

An unlinked refund is a refund that is not tied to an original Toast transaction. Unlinked refunds are rare and are not enabled by default. If you need to issue an unlinked refund, contact Toast Customer Care.

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To reduce chargeback risk on online orders, review Chargebacks FAQ for an overview of the chargeback process, and Handle and Review Guest Chargebacks in Toast Web for the steps to dispute a chargeback through the Chargeback Challenger dashboard. For online and card-not-present transactions specifically, see Increase Chargeback Protection for Card-Not-Present Transactions.

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Card fees are sometimes shown as estimated because the customer is on monthly credit card processing rate fees. Once 100% of the information for a transaction has been received, the reporting label changes from "estimated" to "fees collected."

Your contracted card fees are listed on your Toast contract. You can also view interactive card fee information in the Deposit Totals Overview report in Toast Web.

To locate the credit card processing fees, locate: Reports > Payments > Deposit Total Overview, see Credit Card Processing Rate.

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