What Does It Mean When Transactions Are Blocked by Merchants?
For every payment you initiate via the Mastercard system, an equivalent sum is first blocked on your card to ensure that you have a sufficient available balance to authorise payment to the merchant. At the moment our systems approve authorisation for the payment, those funds will temporarily show as blocked in your transaction history.
Most blocked transactions will be finalised and the funds deducted from your card account balance within 24 hours.
OPEN Transactions:
Since a blocked transaction is also a payment guarantee for the merchant, we cannot terminate, or credit, any blocked transactions. After we authorise the payment it is up to the merchant (or the payment processor of the respective merchant) to decide what to do with the payment:
- The payment can be finalised and the merchant can claim the funds for the transaction
- The merchant can decide to cancel the payment (the funds will be returned to your available balance immediately)
- The merchant can decide not to take any action (the transaction will automatically time out and the blocked funds will return to your available balance after 30 days)
In case a transaction is cancelled by the merchant but still appears as blocked in your Crosscard prepaid Mastercard account, contact the merchant directly, and instruct the merchant to cancel the payment authorisation, using the exact same 6-digit authorisation code used to authorise the initial payment.
In case the transaction is not completed by the merchant (or cancelled incorrectly), the amounts will be automatically unblocked after 30 days and credited onto your card account.