Manual and delayed capture
Manual capture is the process of placing an authorization hold on a card, and then capturing the payment later, typically at the time of fulfillment.
The initial invocation of create_payment_session requires that the customer be present in the checkout flow. Additional calls for capture or voids don’t require customer-in-flow.
Authorization holds for manual capture are created and managed using the same create_payment_session endpoint outlined in Accept Your First Payment.
Manual capture relies on your system storing the id field from the payment session response and calling /payments/v1/payment_session/{business_id}/capture when the payment should be captured, or /payments/v1/payment_session/{business_id}/void to release the authorization hold.
Suggested implementation
Use manual capture when your order should be authorized at checkout, but charged later after a fulfillment decision.
Create the payment session as an authorization
Pass kind: "authorization" to
create_payment_session. Store the
returned payment session id on your order.
Wait for the authorization webhook
Listen for
payment_session_complete.
For manual capture, the key post-checkout webhook status is authorized. This means the
authorization hold is ready to capture or void.
Capture when you are ready to fulfill
Call capture_payment_session with a
unique idempotency_key, the total_amount to capture, and the item_details being captured.
Fulfill after capture succeeds
The authorization webhook tells you the funds are held, not captured. Fulfill after your capture request succeeds for the amount you intend to charge.
Void if you will not fulfill
If the order should not be fulfilled, call
void_payment_session to release the
authorization hold.
If you need to capture more than the original authorization amount, void the authorization and create a new payment session. Capture amounts must be less than or equal to the original authorization.
Flow diagram
Request body
The create_payment_session endpoint can be invoked with the additional fields described here.
Kind values
one_time_payment(DEFAULT): The charge is immediately captured. This is the default if this field is not set.authorization: Aone_time_paymentauthorization hold only. Must be manually captured or voided with a follow-up API call.
Response body
The response is the same as described in the create_payment_session API reference, with additional error states.
Bad request
HTTP Status: 400
If a field is missing or the request otherwise can’t be processed, we’ll return a 400.
Capture and void operations
Once an authorization hold has been created, you can either capture or void it:
- Capture: Call
POST /payments/v1/payment_session/{business_id}/captureto capture the authorized amount. - Void: Call
POST /payments/v1/payment_session/{business_id}/voidto release the authorization hold without capturing.
Capture request
Use a unique idempotency_key for each capture attempt. Include the total amount being captured and
the specific items included in the capture.
If you plan to capture by item, provide item_id on each order_items entry when creating the
payment session so you can reference those same items in item_details.
Set final to false only if you plan to make additional captures against the same authorization.
This requires multi-capture, which is off by default — see
Capturing in multiple parts.
Void request
Void the authorization when the order should not be fulfilled.
Capturing in multiple parts
By default an authorization gets exactly one capture. Multi-capture lets you draw against a single authorization more than once — the usual case being a multi-shipment order, where each shipment captures the value that physically left the warehouse and the remainder stays held for the next one.
Multi-capture is disabled on every sales channel until Truemed enables it for yours, and it is not compatible with every sales channel configuration. Confirm with your Truemed representative that it can be turned on for your channel before you build against it.
Turning it on
Both sides have to line up:
- Truemed enables multi-capture on your sales channel. There is no self-serve toggle.
- You pass
request_multicapture: truetocreate_payment_session, alongsidekind: "authorization".
request_multicapture cannot be combined with tokenize: true or with a payment_token — a
session that saves or reuses a card cannot also be multi-captured. If any of those conditions fails,
create_payment_session returns:
request_multicapture is only meaningful with kind: "authorization". Sessions created with
kind: "one_time_payment" are captured automatically, in full, as a single final capture.
request_multicapture is not part of the idempotency comparison. Replaying a create_payment_session
call with the same idempotency_key but a different request_multicapture value returns the
original session unchanged — it does not switch multi-capture on or off. See
create_payment_session for the full list of
fields that are not compared.
Requesting it does not guarantee it
request_multicapture: true asks the card network for the capability. The network decides, per card,
at authorization time. If it declines, the authorization behaves like an ordinary single-capture
hold, and your first final: false capture fails with:
There is no field on the payment session that reports the grant ahead of time, so treat a single-capture fallback as a live possibility and be ready to capture the order in one final call.
Making the captures
Call capture_payment_session once per
shipment with a unique idempotency_key per capture, final: false on every capture but the
last, and final: true on the last one.
Rules each capture must satisfy
TotalAmountInvalid on a capture returns the fixed message Capture amount is invalid. — it does not
name which of the four rules above was broken. InvalidItemizedData does: its message names the item
and the value that was rejected.
The card network also caps how many times one authorization can be drawn against: at most 50 non-final captures plus the final one.
After capturing
Each capture shows up in the captures[] array on
get_payment_session, carrying its own id,
capture_amount, captured_at, amount_refundable, and item_details. The
payment_session_complete webhook
carries a captures[] array too, with id, capture_amount, and captured_at on each entry.
Pass a capture’s id as capture_id on
create_refund to refund against that specific capture.