Skip to main content
Evaluate payment readiness before authorization and optimize payment retries. After your customer has connected their credit cards, evaluate each card before attempting a payment. Method returns behavioral signals used to estimate payment readiness and recommends when to retry failed payments.
Public preview. Preauth Signals is in public preview. Contact your Method CSM to request access.

Prerequisites

Before using Preauth Signals, complete the Getting Started flow:
  • Entity created
  • Identity verified
  • Credit cards connected

Why Use It?

  • Reduce involuntary churn: Identify the best time to retry failed payments.
  • Increase authorization rates: Know a payment’s likelihood of success before sending it to the network.

How It Works

Before attempting a payment, create a Preauth Signals assessment for a connected credit card Account. Method scores the assessment synchronously so you can decide whether to authorize now or schedule the attempt for later.
1

Create Preauth Signals

Create a Preauth Signals assessment with POST /accounts/{acc_id}/preauth. Provide the ID of a connected credit card Account in the path and a purchase object with the transaction amount.
2

Review the assessment

The create request returns the assessment after processing finishes. Review its signals to determine whether to authorize the payment immediately or schedule it for later.
Use success_likelihood to choose the best card for a payment, and optimal_retry_date to schedule the transaction. If Method does not have enough recent liability data to calculate a prediction, both fields are null and the completed assessment includes error.sub_type: "PREAUTH_INSUFFICIENT_DATA".
3

Retrieve the assessment later

Use GET /accounts/{acc_id}/preauth/{preauth_id} when you need to retrieve the persisted assessment again.

What’s Next

Wallet Intelligence

Retrieve wallet-level insights to personalize customer experiences.

Preauth Signals API Reference

Full API documentation for Preauth Signals.