Authorize a payment and capture funds later

The PayPal Checkout integration supports a 2-step authorize and capture payment model.

Authorize a buyer's funds before you capture them, then settle the purchase later. An authorization places a hold on the funds and is valid for 29 days. For example, use authorize and capture to complete a task before finalizing the payment, such as verifying that you have the item in stock.

How it works

Partner requirements

Know before you code

1. Separate authorize and capture in the approval intent

The default approval intent of the JavaScript SDK is to both authorize the transaction and capture payment immediately. To split authorize and capture into separate actions, add &intent=authorize to the JavaScript SDK script tag, as shown in the following example:

<script
  src="https://www.paypal.com/sdk/js?client-id=CLIENT_ID&intent=authorize">
</script>

2. Create order

Before you authorize funds, you must create an order with the intent field set to AUTHORIZE.

Use the purchase_units/payee object to specify the end receiver of the funds.

3. Authorize order

After your buyer approves the order, you call the Authorize order endpoint of the Orders v2 API to authorize the buyer's funds.

Use the purchase_units/payee object to specify the end receiver of the funds.

curl -v -k -X POST https://api-m.paypal.com/v2/checkout/orders/5O190127TN364715T/authorize \\
  -H 'PayPal-Partner-Attribution-Id: BN-CODE' \\
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer ACCESS-TOKEN' \\
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \\
  -d '{}'

An authorization places a hold on the funds and is valid for 29 days.

After a successful authorization, PayPal recommends that you capture the funds within the 3-day honor period. Success of the capture is subject to risk and availability of funds on the authorized funding instrument.

Within the 29-day authorization period, you can issue multiple re-authorizations after the honor period expires. A re-authorization generates a new Authorization ID and restarts the honor period. Any subsequent capture should be performed on the new Authorization ID. If you do a re-authorization on the 27th day of the authorization, you get only 2 days of honor period.

You can capture less than the original authorization, full authorization amount, or even more than the authorization amount (up to 115% of the original authorization or $75 USD more, whichever is less).

4. Capture authorization

When you are ready to capture the funds you authorized, call /v2/payments/authorizations/{authorization_id}/capture. You can retrieve the authorization_id from the purchase_units/payments/authorizations/id field of the response from the previous step to authorize an order or from a show order details call.

curl -v -X POST https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v2/payments/authorizations/5O190127TN364715T/capture \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <Access-Token>" \
  -d '{
    "payment_instruction": {
      "disbursement_mode": "INSTANT",
      "platform_fees": [
        {
          "amount": {
            "currency_code": "USD",
            "value": "2.00"
           }
        }
      ]
    }
  }'

Next steps and customizations