Capture 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 the captureSessionResolve or captureSessionReject mutation.
Shopify updates the payment status.

Initiate the flow

Anchor link to section titled "Initiate the flow"

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 the captureSessionResolve or captureSessionReject mutation to accept or reject the capture of funds respectively.

The capture flow begins with an HTTP POST request sent from Shopify to the payments app's capture session URL provided during app extension configuration:

Shopify must receive an HTTP 201 (Created) response 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.

Request headers

Anchor link to section titled "Request headers"

Header	Description
`Shopify-Shop-Domain`Required	The permanent domain of the merchant's shop. Can be used to identify which shop is initiating the request.
`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.

Request body

Anchor link to section titled "Request body"

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)`

Resolve a capture session

Anchor link to section titled "Resolve a capture session"

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 session

Anchor link to section titled "Reject a capture session"

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.