If you fund your Privacy account with a debit card, transactions will start as "pending" and transition to "settled" once finalized. However, if you fund your account with a bank account (ACH), the transaction will go through an additional "settling" step before it becomes "settled."
Pending
When you authorize a purchase with a Privacy Virtual Card, it appears on your account as pending with the amount of the transaction. This means you have given the merchant permission to use your virtual card to debit your account for an agreed upon amount.
This process usually happens within minutes, but some merchants may not confirm the transaction until the goods are shipped.
If the merchant cancels your order while it is in a pending state, it will "fall off" your Privacy account within 7 days as incomplete, and no funds will be debited from your funding source.
Please contact the merchant directly to inquire about the status of your order.
Settling
When a transaction moves to settling, the merchant has completed the transaction, and your funding source is in the process of being debited.
If your order changes or a tip is added to the transaction, the transaction amount might be different from the authorized amount.
Settled
Once a purchase has moved to settled, the funds have been debited from your funding source, and the transaction is complete.
Authorized
You may notice transactions with a $0 amount and an authorized status on your Privacy Dashboard. This represents a “$0 authorization,” which many merchants make to verify that a card is active before processing a transaction.
This often happens when you add a new payment method to a merchant’s platform—for example, when you connect a card to your Uber account. The merchant uses this $0 transaction to confirm that the card is valid and ready for future payments.
If you did intend to complete a transaction with the merchant, you should expect to see the actual purchase amount appear as a separate transaction.