Capturing an authorized payment

A capture describes the process of how merchants capture funds for an authorized payment. A capture is the second part of a two-part payment flow, and occurs after an authorized payment is finalized. Finalized payments have kind set to authorization. When a merchant wishes to capture the funds on an authorized transaction, Shopify sends a capture request to a payments app, and the app can resolve or reject it.

capture steps

The merchant clicks to capture the authorized payment.
Shopify sends a backend request to the payments app, specifying the capture request.
The app replies with a 201 and an empty response body.
The app finalizes the capture using either CaptureSessionResolve or CaptureSessionReject mutations.
Shopify updates the status.

Requirements

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You've completed the Getting started building payments apps.
You've familiarized yourself with the transaction requirements.

Scopes

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To use the GraphQL mutations, your app must be aware of access scopes for payments apps.

Initiate the flow

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A capture can only be performed when the payment initiated by Shopify has a kind property with a value of authorization. With an authorization you place a hold on funds and then reply to Shopify's capture request with either CaptureSessionResolve or CaptureSessionReject mutations to either accept or reject the capture of funds.

The capture flow begins with an HTTP POST request sent from Shopify to the provider's Capture session URL:

Request body example

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Attribute	Description	Type
`id`Required	Unique identifier for the capture attempt. Used as the idempotency key. Assume that requests with a given ID are identical to any previously-received requests with the same ID.	`String`
`gid`Required	Identifies the capture when communicating with Shopify (in GraphQL mutations, for example).	`String`
`payment_id`Required	The ID of the authorized payment that is to be captured.	`String`
`amount`Required	The amount to be captured. The value is always sent using a decimal point as a separator, regardless of locale.	`Numeric`
`currency`Required	The three-letter ISO 4217 currency code.	`String`
`test`Required	Indicates whether the capture is in test or live mode. The `test` field is only sent if you select API version `2022-01` or higher in the payments app extension configuration in the Partner Dashboard. For more information, refer to Test a payments app.	`Boolean`
`merchant_locale`Required	The IETF BCP 47 language tag representing the language used by the merchant.	`String`
`proposed_at`Required	A timestamp representing when the capture request was proposed.	`String (ISO-8601)`

Request headers

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Header	Description
`Shopify-Shop-Domain`Required	The permanent domain of the merchant's shop. Can be used to identify which shop is initiating the capture.
`Shopify-Request-Id`Required	The unique request ID used to track specific requests for troubleshooting purposes.
`Shopify-Api-Version`Required	The API version selected in the payments app configuration. The version selected defines the response expected by the payments app.

Response

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Shopify must receive a 201 (Created) HTTP status for the capture session creation to be successful.

If the request fails, then it's retried several times. If the request still fails, then the merchant needs to manually retry the capture in the Shopify admin.

Capture an authorized payment

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After you've successfully processed the capture request, you can resolve it by using the captureSessionResolve mutation:

The id argument corresponds to the gid of the capture.

Reject a capture

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If you don't want to process a capture request, then you should reject it. You might want to reject a capture if authorization has expired or if you suspect that the request is fraudulent or high risk. You should only reject a capture in the case of final and irrecoverable errors. Otherwise, you should re-attempt to resolve the capture.

You can reject a capture using the captureSessionReject mutation:

As part of the rejection, you need to include a reason why the capture was rejected as part of CaptureSessionRejectionReasonInput.

The CaptureSessionRejectionReasonInput.code is a CaptureSessionStatusReasonRejectionCode, which is an enum of standardized error codes.

The CaptureSessionRejectionReasonInput.merchantMessage argument is a localized error message presented to the merchant explaining why the capture was rejected.

Retry policy

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If there's a Shopify service disruption, or if 5xx (Server error responses) HTTP status codes are being returned, then requests must be retried. It is suggested to follow the guidelines in the retry policy section.