Authorisation holds on your selected payment method
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For some orders you place with IONOS, the invoice amount (possibly without deductions) or a portion thereof may be reserved on your chosen payment method. Similarly, you might notice a small charge of £1.00 for which there is no invoice. Both of these situations can give the impression of an unauthorised or double charge.
This article explains the background and why your chosen payment method will only be charged the actual final invoice amount.
Note
You can find out which payment methods are available to you in the Help Centre article “Selecting a payment method”.
An authorisation hold on your selected payment method
To ensure the security and efficiency of the IONOS payment system, authorisation holds are created on your selected payment method for some transactions. The reserved amount is deducted from your available limit there and cannot be used by you for the duration of the hold.
As soon as the invoice has been created and paid using your selected payment method, this payment hold is released again. This means you payonly once.
Payment method verification: pre-authorisation (£1.00)
In addition to the reservation of the invoice amount, you may see a small charge from IONOS of between 1 and 2 euros on your bank statement or credit card – without having been sent an invoice for it. This is called a pre-authorisation hold.
Why do we do this? This pre-authorisation serves as a kind of bank deposit. It allows us to check the validity of your payment card and ensure that the payment method works. This ensures that your payment method is active and ready for immediate use.
What happens to the money? If you see this debit, don't worry: IONOS immediately bills and refunds this small amount as a standard validation step.
If you place multiple orders or update your payment details several times, IONOS may perform this check for each instance individually. Therefore, it's perfectly normal to see several of these small pre-authorisations on your statement.
Note
You will incur no additional costs for the authorisation hold. You only pay the invoice amount for your selected product or service.
Releasing the authorisation hold in the event of cancellation or end of trial
If you decide to cancel your order before invoicing or discontinue use during a 30-day free trial, the reserved amount will be automatically released within 28 days.
Please note that authorisation holds are released immediately on our end, but it may take up to several weeks for the hold to be removed from your customer statement, depending on your bank. IONOS has no control over these processing times. Therefore, if you have any questions regarding a pending hold, please contact the customer service of your chosen financial institution directly.
Authorisation hold not possible
If the provider of your payment method, e.g. your credit card issuer, declines the reservation, IONOS cannot process your order.
In this case, please double-check that all details are correctly entered. If the issue persists, we recommend contacting your payment provider to understand why the hold is being blocked, or simply restarting the purchase process with a new payment method.