Partial Approvals

Increase Customer Flexibility By Implementing Partial Approvals

Partial Approvals let you accept the funds a card has available instead of declining the whole purchase, so your customer can cover the rest with another form of payment.

What are Partial Approvals?

A partial approval (or partial authorization) is a transaction response in which the issuing bank or card network approves only a portion of the requested amount, instead of declining the entire purchase. This typically happens when a customer's debit or prepaid card has insufficient funds.

Partial Approvals are especially valuable in industries such as healthcare. For example, they allow a customer to present an FSA card for part of their basket and use a personal credit or debit card for the remaining balance.

How It Works

1. The scenario: A customer attempts a $200 purchase, but their prepaid or debit card only has $80 remaining.
2. The response: Instead of returning a flat decline (such as decline code 10), the bank approves the available $80 and declines the rest.
3. The resolution: You capture the approved $80 and prompt the customer to pay the remaining $120 with a secondary payment method, such as another card, cash, or a gift card.

Enabling Partial Approvals

Partial Approvals must be enabled before you can accept them. Contact NMI Support to enable Partial Approvals on your account and for the merchant accounts you want to use them with.

Implementing Partial Approvals in Your Authorization Flow

A partial approval is returned with response=1 and response_code=100, the same values as a full approval. Your integration must therefore check the amount returned to tell the two apart.

Identifying a partial approval

Example

You request $10.27 and the card has only $10.00 available. The response includes:

response=1
response_code=100
responsetext=Partial approval; Original Request 10.27
amount_authorized=10.00
partial_payment_balance=0.27
partial_payment_id=1794291732876659

Because amount_authorized (10.00) is less than the requested amount (10.27), and partial_payment_balance is 0.27, you know this is a partial approval.

What happens next

The partial approval is confirmed automatically: the payment device shows the approved amount and the $10.00 is captured. You then have two options:

• Collect the balance. Take a second payment for the remaining partial_payment_balance (in this example, $0.27) using another payment method.
• Reject the partial approval. Void the transaction as you normally would, and start again.

Customer experience on the payment device

When a partial approval is returned, the consumer sees a message on the payment device screen:

Approved
Partial Approval: $[X]

where [X] is the approved amount.

Summary checklist

• Contact NMI Support to enable Partial Approvals.
• Treat response=1 with response_code=100 as an approval, then compare amount_authorized with the amount you requested.
• If partial_payment_balance is present and greater than 0, collect the remaining balance or void the transaction.