Void

A void is the cancellation of an authorized transaction before it has been submitted for Settlement. When a transaction is voided successfully, the authorization hold on the cardholder's account is released and no charge appears on their statement, unlike a Refund, where the charge completes and is then reversed, a void prevents the charge from ever completing in the first place.

Voids are only possible within a defined window after authorization, before the transaction has entered the settlement batch. Once a transaction has been settled, it cannot be voided. At that point, the only option is a refund (which is a new credit transaction reversing the original charge). The technical availability of voids depends on the gateway and the timing: most gateways support voids until end-of-day batch processing, after which the transaction is considered settled and a refund is the appropriate action.

From the cardholder's perspective, voids are preferable to refunds when possible. A voided transaction never appears as a charge on the statement, the authorization hold simply disappears, often within minutes to hours depending on the cardholder's bank. A refunded transaction appears as a charge followed by a credit, which can be confusing and may temporarily affect the cardholder's available balance before the refund posts. For merchants, voids are also operationally cleaner: they do not generate Chargeback risk, do not involve fee revenue that must be returned, and do not appear in chargeback ratio calculations.

Common scenarios requiring voids include: order cancellations before fulfillment, fraud flags identified after authorization but before settlement, data entry errors caught before the batch closes, and deferred capture decisions where the merchant decides not to fulfill an order.