When taking card payments, there are several steps that must occur before the funds paid by the customer are delivered into your bank account. The important steps to remember when completing a payment are:

1. Payment initiation: This is the start of the payment process. Here your customer provides their card information either in-person by swiping, tapping, or inserting their card, or they provide the card information online/over the phone by entering the card details.
2. Authorization request: Lightspeed Payments forwards the transaction details to the customer’s bank for verification. The customer’s bank then verifies the cardholder’s account, checking for sufficient funds and any potential fraud or security issues.
3. Authorization response: Based on the bank’s evaluation, the bank either approves or declines the transaction and communicates this decision to Lightspeed Payments.
4. Payment capture: The final step for completing a payment. The held funds are ‘captured’ and sent to Lightspeed Payments so they can be settled as a part of your regular payout.

The authorization process occurs automatically and in a matter of seconds. Once a transaction has been approved, the capture process may vary depending on how you have configured your Lightspeed Payments account. Understanding how payment capture works and keeping your POS properly connected can help prevent delays and ensure your payments are processed as expected.

Understanding payment capture options

Lightspeed Payments can process payments using standard or delayed capture, depending on your payment configuration. To view or edit which option you have enabled:

1. Log in to the Back Office with your administrator account.
2. From the navigation menu, select Payment > Payment methods.
3. Locate the Lightspeed Payments payment method and click Manage.

4. Click Edit to make changes to your payment processing settings.

   

With Standard payment processing, payments are submitted for capture shortly after the transaction and are typically captured within a few minutes of the authorization response.

With Pre-authorized or batch payment processing, the payment is authorized first and captured later (between 5 AM and 6 AM local time). This allows the final payment amount, including applicable tips or adjustments, to be finalized before capture.

Pre-authorized or batch payment processing is only available in select regions.

Using pre-authorized or batch payment processing

For configurations that use pre-authorized or batch capture, payments and applicable tips are submitted at 5:29 AM.

Your active POS devices play an important role in this process. At capture time, active devices close the current business period, allowing Lightspeed to begin processing the payments associated with that period.

If an active device is offline, asleep, or unable to communicate with Lightspeed during payment capture time, payment capture will be delayed.

To ensure payments are captured as expected, your POS devices must remain:

• Powered on.
• Awake and out of sleep mode.
• Running the POS app.
• Connected to a stable internet connection.

For iPad, you can set up an automation to ensure that the Lightspeed Restaurant app stays open during batch capture.

Troubleshooting delayed payment capture

If your payments are being captured later than expected, confirm that:

• Your active POS devices are powered on and connected to the internet at the time of capture.
• Your internet connection is stable.
• All devices, including your POS and network devices, are not entering sleep mode during batch capture time.
• The Lightspeed Restaurant app is open and active during batch capture.
• Your POS has received all recent configuration changes.

If payments continue to capture later than expected after checking the above, contact Lightspeed Support for further assistance.