How does the "Honor Period" for authorizations/reauthorizations really work?

cebo494
Contributor
Contributor

There is a 3 day "Honor Period" that starts when you authorize a payment for the first time, and can be refreshed via a reauthorization up until 29 days after the initial authorization. I have a couple questions about the particulars of this honor period that mostly relate to the info for reauthorizations in the API reference and the overview from the integration guide. I can't help but feel like my confusion comes from some critical misconception of the auth/reauth process, so if that's the case then hopefully my questions are enough for someone who knows better to see where I'm going wrong, but otherwise I can't seem to find the exact answers to any of these questions in the docs.

  • What exactly is the Honor Period really? My understanding is that after an order is approved and authorized, I can capture any time in 29 days, but the money is only guaranteed to be capturable during the honor period, otherwise there is some risk of various errors during capture. Is this correct? Or am I not allowed to capture at all outside of an honor period. 
  • When does the honor period start/end exactly? Is it an exact 72 hour window, to the second, starting when the authorization is made? Does it only roll over at midnight or something? Is that midnight UTC or some other time zone?
  • Is there a recommended way to determine when that honor period has expired? Obviously this will depend on when the start/end exactly is but regardless. Authorizations have an expiration date in the API response when you create them, but that is only for the 29 day window, not the honor period. Is there a similar hard coded expire time for the honor period or is it just something like checking if the update_time is >3 days ago?
  • Is there any reason I shouldn't just always reauthorize every payment as soon as it's previous authorization has lapsed (via some batch process). Seemingly if funding would fail I would want to know that as soon as possible so that it can be addressed with the customer. Documentation for the v1 api and other older stuff mentions a limit on the number of reauthorizations allowed but the newer documentation only says: "you can issue multiple re-authorizations after the honor period expires", and I swear I found one document somewhere that said you can reauthorize 10 times (or more if you contact PayPal and set that up).
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MTS-Aaron
PayPal Employee
PayPal Employee

Hi @cebo494 

 

  1. You're pretty much right on that an Honor Period is the period of time that you're most likely to capture a transaction. Technically, it isn't guaranteed (for very rare cases) but it is the 3 day period of time that money is "held" in the buyer's account during an authorization. You can capture outside of the honor period, but it simply doesn't have a higher probability of capturing because the funds are no longer held in the buyer's funding source, which means they could have used them up before your capture pulls them out.
  2. From my experience, it should be an exact 72 hours, to the second.
  3. It expires 72 hours and 1 second after the authorization.
  4. So, there should only be 1 additional reauthorization allowed for an account by default. Merchants can reach out to their Customer Success Managers or Customer Support in order to ask for the limit to be increased, but not all are eligible for that. Now, you can issue multiple reauthorizations, extending the life of the honor period, but only if it is allowed in your account.

I'm hoping I covered all your questions. I do understand it can be a confusing topic, but that should be all the necessary information.

 

I hope that helps!

-Aaron

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