How to cancel an authorized transaction in authorize.net gateway using ActiveMerchant

Question

Purpose: Only successful purchases appear in the billing statement. I do not want declined authorizations to appear in their billing application (as shown in the online banking system) pending. The customer often accidentally enters the wrong billing address, for example, followed by the correct one. Together, two attempts, one successful and one not both, appear in their billing statement pending before settlement. This may frighten the customer, as it looks like they will be charged twice.

Details: When I do AUTH_CAPTURE (via ActiveMerchant purchase) or AUTH (through ActiveMerchant authorization), which is rejected and subsequently wants to cancel this authorization (through ActiveMerchant void) so that it does not appear in the customer billing statement as expected (although it will set in a few days), the gateway will not be able to detect that the transaction is invalid using the authorization code received from the authorization or capture calls on the gateway.

This is specific to authorize.net authorization gateway.

Please inform.

Thanks!

Answer 1

If I understand your question correctly, I'm not sure there is a way to do what you want.

This is a limitation of the system of gateways / trading accounts.

I just stayed at the hotel last weekend and when I checked in I was warned that an "authorization fee" would appear on my card and then leave. The situation with the hotel is similar to what you are dealing with, and I don’t think there is a way around. Gas stations do this, restaurants, hotels, etc.

It is so common that I won’t worry about what causes anxiety among customers. You can put the expression in your payment form to say something about the authorization order - I did this in the past in projects.

And for the specifics of auth.net - I am sure that you cannot invalidate auth, so you get an error. The returned auth code is used later to commit the amount, if necessary.