Have you ever recieved a notification regarding a temporary hold on funds on your credit or debit card or GrabPay Wallet? There’s no need to be worry if you get one here’s why.
🔍 What is Payment Authorisation
Payment authorization is a temporary hold on funds on your credit or debit card or GrabPay Wallet. For instance, when you make a booking using card payment, the bank will “hold” money (as written in terms of service) to ensure there are enough funds to be charged at the end of the Service. Payment authorization is a way to prevent risks which is an industry-accepted practice; in fact, you’ve probably encountered it before. When you check into a hotel, the concierge usually does a pre-authorization on your credit card, locking down funds to pay for incidental charges (like if you trash the room). If the room is intact – and you haven’t secretly raided the mini bar – the money is refunded to you.
⏰ How long will the fund be held?
Grab and Payment Gateway releases the held amount immediately as soon as the Service is finished or cancelled. The fund is not deducted to Grab system at all.
For credit cards, Grab will take 30-60 minutes to release the holding amount. The amount should reflect back in your card statement within the next billing cycle and depending on your bank process.
For debit cards, the period of the refunding process will be subjected to your issuing bank’s policies to validate the transaction before approving a refund to an account.
-For debit card, it may take 7-45 business days, depending on the refunding process of your issuing bank’s policies.
For GrabPay Wallet, the amount will be reflected on your GrabPay Wallet balance within 24 hours.
💵 How much money will Grab place in “hold”?
The amount varies for each service and will be calculated based on the vehicle type and the time of booking which will be the upper bound fare shown on the application. The amount held is not charged until the trip is completed. Then, Grab will refund the balance from the held amount. E.g. the held amount is 290 THB and the actual fare is 200 THB, Grab will refund 90 THB to the registered card which won’t affect in the receipt, but in the banking statement.
💚 Why does Grab adopt this system?
Besides the Service fare, there are costs that are potentially occurred during particular service, i.e. tolls, parking fee, change destination fee, change in food orders, etc, which is the reason for Grab to make use of pre-authorization system by adding some amount that the Service could potentially take (Upper bound fare) to the fixed fare that shown on the application before user books a service to avoid the risks that Grab is not able to charge the expense due to insufficient fund on client’s card.
For more information please visit https://help.grab.com/passenger/en-th/360002030307