Beating a Dead Horse but it needs to be: Preauthorization

[FarmAndBar]

We need to be able to preauthorize credit cards when running a tab. Period.  We really enjoyed the low buy in and easy menu development and a couple of the other features, but a bar/restaurant needs to be able to run a tab and preauthorize a credit card.  I've gone back and looked at conversations about it and it appears that this has been a CONSTANT request by users that has gone ignored.

I'd like to know why it isn't available.

[#2]

Pre-Authorization for Bar Tabs Update ⭐
Hi everyone - I'm Hadley, from the F&B product team. First of all, thank you SO MUCH for continuing to share all the feedback here over the years, we know how important the Bar Tabs feature is. For anyone who is not aware, this feature is currently in beta in the US for Square for Restaurants POS. 

➡️ You can join the beta community here and our beta team will enable feature to your account. You can find the support article for getting set up on RST POS here. 

As a reminder, when a feature is in beta, there is still some engineering work happening to iron out the smaller bugs and optimizing the experience for our sellers and their customers. If you choose to participate in the beta testing, please share any feedback (good or bad 😄) to our beta team at betafeedback@squareup.com so we can learn how it is working for you and your staff.  

Thank you!

[Quikbyke]

We plan to rent electric-assist bicycles from a remote location and need to pre-authorize the card for $X amount, for security reasons. Apparently Square doesn't have this capability. Has anyone come up with a viable work-around or option that still lets us use the Square Station?

[amemerson08]

I am also interested in this feature. Please update us if this becomes available so I can use it for my party rental business! We use a deposit to book and rental fee. So having the option to hold the reservation deposit instead of refunding would make out Gross sale have a more accurate amount. Thank you!

[Sean]

@amemerson08 - Can do! Thanks for the post! 👍

[DaleatSMCH]

I would like to be able to do this as well. A security deposit when renting out a grill isn't something that everyone has cash for, but would be able to cover with a credit card. When the grill comes back in good shape, it would be great to just release the hold, not have to issue a refund, and pay the transaction fee twice for an amount that I didn't profit on.

[Kelly]

Currently, Square doesn’t offer support for pre-authorizing cards or collecting deposits. Though I can absolutely see how that would be very important to your business, pre-authorizing cards is not something on our roadmap at the moment, but I’ll be sure to let our developers know about the feature request.

[MHS]

this is absolutely needed - we are constantly testing the readers with $1 charges, then crediting ourselves back the $1.

this is needless back and forth, and clutters up our reports and makes accounting more confusing.

ability to just to an authorization, which then falls off automatically makes much more sense -- every other credit card terminal i've ever used has this feature!

[K9ADVISOR]

Does Square accept Discover card?

[luxifestyle]

I dont think you can authorize a card. I asked cs earlier tonight and there is no way to authorize - just ability to charge the card so it is a final pmt - hope this helps

[Caty]

@luxifestyle is correct (thanks for posting!) – we don't have pre-authorization capabilities, though I know it's on our product team's radar. I'll definitely let you know if there's anything else I can share in that regard. And yes, you can accept Discover cards through Square as well! 

[scooterjoes]

Square should implement preauthorizations.  

A % charge is not really workable.  If I rent an electric bike for $40 but my security deposit is $250, the % approach is not plausible.  Preauthorizations are a simple implementation.  It's just a new transaction type (I've implmented them on other systems) so far as the back end is involved and all credit card companies support this today ... just reserve a hotel room.  Further, other processors support a preauth.

How many signatures on a petition does Square need to get this done?