Why do funds appear to be charged twice on the customer’s bank account?
When a customer pays with a MasterCard or Visa, the payment may sometimes appear twice on the customer’s statement. There is a simple explanation.
When you accept a payment on your website, two actions occur technically:
- The amount is reserved on the customer’s card when the customer completes the payment.
- The amount is captured when you capture the payment via your ePay admin or your own system.
Sometimes it looks like the amount has been charged twice on the customer’s bank account. This is because both actions may appear on the statement when MasterCard or Visa is used. The first is a reservation of the amount, while the second is the actual capture.
You can ask the cardholder to log in to their online banking on a computer (not the tablet or mobile version) to view the detailed information. There, the cardholder will be able to see the difference between the two.
The reservation will disappear
Note that the reservation will disappear from the statement again. However, it may take up to 30 days before this happens.
