End User: Open Tab Pre-Authorization on Credit Statement

**Feature Definition: **Credit Card Security

**Benefits: **By understanding how a pre-authorization works, you will learn why you may briefly see a second charge on your card statement and more importantly, that you will not actually end up paying that value.

A credit card pre-authorization is essentially a temporary hold placed by a merchant on a customer’s credit card, designed to validate that a card is active. It allows merchants to guarantee the availability of a payment amount for a specific transaction before it is finally confirmed.

There are several key reasons merchants employ pre-authorizations:

1. Security: Enabling credit card pre-authorization avoids chargebacks because additional fraud checks can be performed while the payment amount is reserved. This reduces fraudulent chargeback occurrences and allows merchants to process payments safely

2. **Avoid Fees: **Many card processors apply a fee for refunded charges. If the payment hasn’t been captured and processed yet, you can simply cancel the hold and no refund is needed – because the payment was never completed – so no fees will be incurred

3. Customer Satisfaction: It is much easier and faster to cancel a hold on a customers card than it is to issue a refund. This allows us to comp and void customer payments on day of the transaction.

As a customer dining at a GoTab location you may encounter a pre-authorization while opening a tab. It is important to note that these are NOT double charges or incorrect charges on your account. They will disappear in 1-5 business days and the only remaining charge will be the value of your tab plus tax, fees, and tip.