What is a Payment Method Authorization?
Each time you launch a campaign, unpause a campaign, or increase the budget for an existing campaign, RollWorks initiates a payment method authorization. This authorization is an essential step to ensure that your payment method is valid and has sufficient funds to support the weekly budget across the campaigns within your billing account that will be spending.
The Payment Method Authorization is not a charge
The payment method authorization amount is voided immediately and it is not a charge. That is why you will not be able to find an invoice for this amount in your billing history.
How does Payment Method Authorization work?
When you launch or modify a campaign budget, RollWorks processes an authorization equal to the weekly budget of all active campaigns. When you unpause a campaign, RollWorks performs an authorization for the weekly budget of the campaign being unpaused. This ensures the payment method can cover the maximum amount that might be invoiced for during that week.
After a successful authorization, the system immediately releases the funds, but depending on your financial institution, those funds may be held for a few days. Some banks may show authorizations as pending transactions, while others display them similarly to actual charges. In some cases, you may not see the authorization at all.
How you can identify an authorization: If you see a 'transaction' from RollWorks in your credit/debit card statement that does not correspond to an RollWorks weekly invoice amount, but you have recently launched, unpaused, or increased a campaign budget, then it is likely a payment method authorization. You can check with our support team or your financial provider to confirm this.
What happens if the payment method authorization fails?
If the authorization fails, it is similar to a credit card decline. Your campaign change will not go into effect. The system will attempt the authorization once a day for five consecutive days, during which you'll receive email notifications. If the authorization continues to fail, the campaign status will change to Not Running, and the system will no longer retry the authorization.
To resolve this, you can:
- Verify or update your payment information: Check the Billing Information page in RollWorks and update your payment method.
- Contact your financial provider: Reach out to your bank or credit card provider to address any issues.
- Lower your weekly budget: Reduce your campaign budgets to an amount that your payment method has the available funds to cover.
How to Restart the Payment Authorization Process
If you've resolved any issues with your payment method and wish to reattempt launching a campaign or increasing a budget, contact RollWorks's Customer Support team here to restart the authorization process. They can help reauthorize your payment method and get your campaigns back on track.