What is a hold on a bank card? Holding period in Sberbank

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

In the article we will consider what a hold is. If a person is used to controlling transactions with his bank account (it is more convenient to do this in the Internet bank), then, for sure, he turned his attention to the fact that after making a payment by card, the corresponding amount of money is not debited from the account, but is frozen (reserved) by the bank within one or more days.

Moreover, the size of the available balance on the bank card is reduced exactly by the frozen amount. The amount that is temporarily blocked on the client’s account is called “card hold” in banking terminology, and the operation of reserving it is called holding.

Basic concepts

The English verb to hold in translation means "to hold", "to hold". This is the reservation of a certain amount of money on the client's card account until the financial transaction is confirmed or there is no confirmation within the time limits set by the bank.

In professional language, such an operation is calledholding, and among plastic card holders such synonyms of this term as: freezing, blocking, hold-transfer, reservation, etc. are common. It would be most correct if each of these synonyms is used together with the keyword: temporary. This process can be called differently, but the essence remains the same.

The essence of the process

Most bank card holders believe (or do not think about it at all) that after they paid in the store with funds from the card through the POS-terminal, the money was immediately debited from their current account. In reality, the fact of payment is the beginning of many operations, which in combination are called "transaction" on a bank card. This process involves the acquiring bank serving the outlet (which owns the pos-terminal), the issuing bank that issued the card, and an intermediate link - a payment system that connects the above banks into a single "chain".

It is thanks to her that a person can pay with his card anywhere in the world where there is appropriate equipment. The most famous payment systems are MasterCard and Visa. The final result of all these operations is obtaining permission to pay by card from the issuing bank. As soon as it is received, payment is made and the amount of the operation is reserved (held) on the card at the same moment. The reserved amount is the money in hold.

Why is this money not debited immediately?

It's all about the algorithminteraction of all banking organizations that are participants in the transaction with the payment system. As a rule, information on all card payments in the merchant is sent to the acquiring bank at the end of the working day, and based on the data received, clearing files are generated (information for debiting, which act as financial confirmation of the transactions), and then these files are sent to the issuing bank through the payment system. Only after that, this financial institution writes off money from current accounts, i.e. the hold on the bank card is terminated.

Auto Withdrawal

If the issuing bank has not received financial confirmation for a specific operation, then after some time set by the bank, the hold is automatically removed - the funds are unfrozen and again become available to the bank card holder.

So, it has already been said that in most cases, after making a purchase, the cardholder considers the payment for the purchased goods or services to be a completed event, but in practice there are also unpleasant situations in which the bank client has to deal with the fact that such a hold, in more depth.

Pitfalls

In accordance with the basic rules established by the payment systems, the bank is obliged to carry out debiting according to the details specified in the received clearing files. If they do not match the authorization details, the card is debited at the expense of the hold. Thus, it turns out that the payment is debited andfunds were blocked. And the bank client, when requested, on the balance sheet sees a minus of both amounts of money. The problem is resolved only over time, when the blocked financial amount does not find confirmation and is unfrozen.

Such a situation may occur when the issuing bank receives the clearing files belatedly. At the same time, the holding has already been removed, but upon receipt of the details for the write-off procedure, the bank makes an expense transaction. If the amount of funds in the account is insufficient, the card balance will go into negative territory, that is, the so-called unauthorized overdraft will occur. To prevent such an unplanned “balance loss”, you should not completely reset the bank account on the card: it should always keep some free amount of money.

Not an expense, but a reservation

Holding is not considered spending money - it's just a temporary reservation. Therefore, when the hold period ends, the money is "unfrozen" and the balance is increased again by the reserved amount.

Besides this, another unpleasant situation may occur when buying, when one amount of money is blocked, and confirming files are sent to another, smaller or larger, then exactly this amount of funds will be debited from the current account. This often happens due to the peculiarities of the conversion, when payments are made in a different currency than the one shown on the bank card account (purchase in a foreign online store or directlyabroad). This is due to the fact that the exchange rate can change from the moment the hold begins until the full write-off of funds.

Terms for which the holding period is set

In fact, the holding period directly depends on the period of time required for the implementation of the above "accounting entries", and its maximum duration is, as a rule, 30 days, taking into account the norms of the current legislation and the rules of the IPU. Thus, any amount reservation is temporary. Banking organizations set holding periods of no more than 30 days, most often from 7 to 15.

If we talk specifically about the holding period in Sberbank, then it is a maximum of 30 days.

Temporary reservation of a current account or amount of money

This operation is the answer to the question, what is hold. At the same time, it is becoming quite a popular service offered by an increasing number of banks. This is a very convenient tool that allows you to speed up the receipt of an account number without visiting a banking organization and transferring documentation. In Russia, the service has been operating relatively recently, and in the world it has long been in great demand.

The number received after booking a bank account may be indicated in the text of the agreement with partners and in other documents.

Temporary Amount Reservation may take the form of an online application. The purpose of this operation is toobtaining details of a current account in a financial institution.

After registration, the bank allocates time during which the client must come to transfer the required package of documents and receive a current account.

This article discusses what a hold is.