What is a payment method authorization?
Each time you launch a campaign or edit your budget RollWorks will process a payment method authorization equal to the weekly budget for all active and paused campaigns from all profiles under your billing account. The purpose of this payment method authorization is to make sure that your payment method is valid and can support the new budget.
Payment method authorizations are not real charges
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.
Depending on your financial provider payment method authorizations from vendors like RollWorks may show differently on your bank or credit card statement. Some financial providers show payment method authorizations as pending transactions that disappear within a few days. Other financial providers show payment method authorizations in the same manner as real charges. Lastly, some financial providers do not show payment method authorizations at all.
After a successful payment method authorization RollWorks will release the funds immediately, but your financial provider might place a hold on them for longer.
Contact your financial provider
If you are seeing an unexpected RollWorks transaction on your bank or credit card statement, please contact your bank or credit card provider to confirm if it is a real charge and not just your financial provider's way of displaying a payment method authorization amount.
What happens if the payment method authorization fails?
If the authorization fails our system will automatically retry this payment method authorization once a day, for five days. It will trigger an email notification. If this authorization fails concurrently for five days, the campaign status will update to Not Running. Our system will not retry this authorization again. Please update your payment method or contact your bank to resolve this issue:
Check your Payment method
Check your Billing Information page to verify that your payment information is accurate or to add a new payment method. Click here to learn how to add another payment method.
Check with your Financial Provider
Reach out to your credit card provider concerning any issues with this payment method authorization.
If the payment method authorization amount is too high to cover the budget of your campaigns you can try reducing it. Continue reading this article to learn how.
Reducing your payment method authorization amount
The payment authorization amount is calculated based on the weekly budget for your running and paused campaigns. If the payment method authorization fails due to being too high you can try reducing the amount your payment method is authorized for.
Set an end date for any campaigns you no longer want
- You will reduce the amount your payment method is being authorized for by setting any campaigns you no longer want to run as Ended Status (so they no longer have a paused status). Any campaigns that reach the Ended Status will no longer be included in the authorization amount.
- Pausing or switching off a campaign won’t exclude it from your payment authorization amount, you must move them to Ended Status.
- For a campaign to effectively reach the Ended Status it must be set up with an end date and it must reach that end date.
You can set the end date of the campaign by following the steps below:
- Log in to RollWorks and navigate to Advertising > Campaigns & Playbooks
- If you don't have a paid plan you will see Advertising > Campaigns
- Click on the Campaigns tab.
- Use the filter to find any campaigns with the status Off or Not Running that you do not wish to continue in the future.
- Click on the three dots icon next to the campaign name and click Edit.
- Under Campaigns Settings > Start and End Date, change the end date from No End Date to today’s date.
- You can either select the end of day or choose a specific hour. It allows you to select minimum 1 hour ahead. It will not be immediate. Times are based on UTC.
- Click Save.
- Repeat the same process for any other campaign you no longer want to run so that they have an end date and reach the Ended campaign status. This will effectively exclude them from your next payment method authorization amount.
Paused Playbooks
For paused playbooks without the end date functionality, it is recommended to reduce the budget to as low as possible. That will reduce the payment method authorization amount.
How to restart the payment method authorization process?
If you think the payment method issue is fixed and wish to try launching the campaign again, reach out to our Customer Support team. We will try to authorize the payment method again.