A card payment is not one event. It is two, separated by anywhere from a few hours to several weeks, and your bank app shows you both. Understanding the gap between them explains most of the charges that look alarming but are entirely routine.
Authorisation and settlement
When you pay by card, the merchant first asks your bank will you honour this amount? Your bank checks the funds, earmarks them, and answers yes. That is authorisation. The money has not moved. It is simply reserved, and shows in your app as pending, held, or reserved depending on the bank.
Later, the merchant submits the transaction for real. That is settlement, and only then does money actually leave your account. The pending entry disappears and a completed one takes its place.
Most of the time this happens fast enough that you never notice. The interesting cases are the ones where the two steps diverge.
Case 1: charged before dispatch
You order something online. The charge appears immediately. The item ships four days later. Nothing is wrong here — what you saw on day one was an authorisation, not a payment.
Retailers vary in when they settle. Some settle at the point of order, some at dispatch, a few not until delivery. UK consumer expectations lean towards charging at dispatch, but there is no rule requiring it, and a pre-order or made-to-order item is commonly charged up front.
This is the single most common reason people believe they have been charged twice. They see the pending authorisation, then see the settled transaction days later, and count two charges. Check the running balance rather than the transaction list — if only one amount has actually left, only one payment happened.
Case 2: the amount is wrong
Some businesses cannot know the final amount at the moment they need authorisation, so they authorise an estimate and settle the real figure later.
| Where | Typical hold | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Petrol stations (pay at pump) | £1, or £99–£120 | The pump cannot know how much you will dispense, so it authorises a ceiling before unlocking |
| Hotels | Room rate plus an incidentals margin | Covers the minibar, room service and damage until you check out |
| Car hire | Often several hundred pounds | Covers the insurance excess and fuel for the rental period |
| Restaurants | Bill plus roughly 20% | Leaves headroom for a tip added after the card is authorised |
| Subscription free trials | £0 or £1 | Verifies the card is live without taking payment. The £1 is usually reversed |
In every one of these cases the held amount is replaced by the correct amount at settlement. The difference is released back — but not always quickly, which is the real problem.
How long a hold lasts
This is where people get genuinely stuck, because the answer depends on the merchant rather than your bank.
If the merchant settles for a lower amount, the surplus is normally released within a few working days. If the merchant never settles at all — an abandoned booking, a cancelled order — the authorisation expires on its own. Typical expiry is around seven days for everyday retail, but can extend to thirty days for travel and car hire.
Your bank generally cannot release a hold early. The funds are earmarked under the card scheme rules, and until the merchant either settles or the authorisation expires, the bank has limited ability to intervene. Asking the merchant to void the authorisation is usually faster than asking your bank to remove it.
Case 3: it settles at a different amount than you agreed
Occasionally the settled figure is genuinely higher than the price you agreed. Foreign currency purchases are the usual innocent explanation — the exchange rate applied at settlement differs from the rate at authorisation, so a purchase in dollars can settle a little above or below what your app first showed.
What is not routine is a UK-priced purchase settling above the agreed amount, a hotel settling well above the room rate with no explanation, or a car hire company settling the full excess without telling you why. Those are worth querying with the merchant first and disputing if the answer is unsatisfactory.
What to do about a pending charge you do not recognise
- Wait, if you can. Most unrecognised pending entries resolve within a few days, either settling into something you recognise or disappearing entirely.
- Check the amount for the tell-tale patterns. A £1 or £0 hold is almost always a card verification, often from a free trial you just started.
- Do not cancel your card over a pending entry alone. You cannot dispute an authorisation that has not settled, and cancelling the card does not always remove the hold.
- Contact the merchant to void it if you recognise the merchant but the amount is wrong. They can release it far faster than your bank can.
- Escalate if it settles. Once money has actually left, you have proper dispute rights — see our guide to Section 75 and chargeback.
- Visa and Mastercard authorisation and clearing rules, as summarised in acquirer merchant guides
- UK Finance, card payment lifecycle documentation
- Published pre-authorisation policies from major UK fuel retailers and car hire operators