Overcapture a payment
Last updated: January 14, 2026
You can overcapture a payment to collect a higher amount than what was originally authorized. This is common in industries such as ride hailing, food, and online grocery delivery and hospitality, where the final price may vary due to tipping, substitutions, and incidentals.
Overcapture enables you to adjust the final amount without requesting an incremental authorization from the scheme. After being processed, the adjusted higher amount clears and settles as a single transaction on the cardholder's statement.
Information
You can only overcapture Visa and Mastercard payments.
To enable overcapture, contact your account manager or request support.
Card schemes set limits on the amount you can overcapture. This limit is generally calculated as a percentage of the authorized amount, with additional restrictions based on country and merchant category code (MCC).
Exceeding these limits or misusing the feature can lead to non-compliance fees from card schemes and may give issuers the right to raise chargebacks. When using overcapture, you assume full liability for compliance with all applicable laws and scheme rules.
The following overcapture limits apply for each card scheme:
| Scheme | Merchant country | MCC | Overcapture limit |
|---|---|---|---|
Visa | Global, except the European Economic Area (EEA) |
| Up to 20% |
4411 – Cruise Lines, Lodging | Up to 15% | ||
3351–3500, 7512, 7513 – Vehicle Rentals | Up to 15% or 75 USD (or local currency equivalent) | ||
All other merchant categories For cardholder-initiated transactions (CITs) only | Up to 15% | ||
Mastercard | United States For cards issued in the United States only | 5812 – Eating Places and Restaurants | Up to 20% |
5814 – Fast Food Restaurants |
You can overcapture a payment whose authorization type is either Estimated or Final.
For example, a payment was authorized for 100 USD, and you want to overcapture up to 120 USD. Call the Capture a payment endpoint, and provide the payment ID of the authorized payment as the {id} path parameter.
post
https://{prefix}.api.checkout.com/payments/{id}/captures
When the payment is captured, you receive a Payment captured webhook with the updated balances object, including the overcaptured amount:
If the overcapture fails, you receive one of the following hard decline response codes:
30401– Capture amount greater than allowed30402– Overcapture not allowed for partial capture30403– Overcapture not allowed for partial authorization