Contact the customer service department of your bank or credit card company if you believe that your account has an erroneous credit authorization. Provide as many details about the transaction as possible, including the date, time and amount. The financial institution will investigate the hold and it may remove it.

These 14 tips will help you minimize the risk of an unauthorized credit card transaction:

1. Monitor your credit card transactions.
2. Keep your PIN or other card details safe.
3. Only make payments through secure services.
4. Get up-to-date antivirus software.
5. Be prudent on the Internet.
6. Look for signs of tampered devices.

Experts say that generally, no, a business cannot charge a credit card without the card holder’s consent; however, there are some situations where consent is not always obvious, especially when it comes to automatic payments or recurring charges.

If a charge is not authorized, it usually means that there is a problem with the account or that you are at, near, or over your credit limit. This authorization tells the merchant that your account is valid and that sufficient credit is available to cover the purchase.

An authorized transaction is a debit or credit card purchase for which the merchant has received approval from the bank that issued the customer’s payment card. Authorized transactions are a component of the electronic payment process.

What’s the difference between authorized and posted transactions on my credit card? Authorized Transactions are those that still need to be settled by a retailer or service provider. Posted Transactions are 100% complete. We’ve paid the retailer or service provider and charged the transaction to your credit card.

Contact Your Bank

1. First, immediately contact your bank and report an unauthorized charge.
2. Your bank has 10 business days from the time you notify them to investigate the problem.
3. You have 60 days to dispute the charge formally.

Posted transactions are purchases that have cleared on your card and the funds have been deducted. There might be some pending transactions that are more or less than the amount you actually spent.

The amount of money in your checking account — the money available at the start of the business day, which does not include any pending withdrawals or deposits — is typically called a current posted balance. The cash available for immediate withdrawal from your checking account is typically called an available balance.

Your posted balance is the actual amount of money posted in your account as of the previous banking day. Your available balance is the amount of money you have to draw upon, which can change throughout the day with any bank activity such as deposits, withdrawals or debit transactions.

The available balance for your account may differ from the current balance because of pending transactions that have been presented against the account, but have not yet been processed. Once processed, the transactions are reflected in the current balance and show in the account history.

However, said amount must be made available within a reasonable time, usually two to five business days. Banks may hold checks from accounts that are repeatedly overdrawn.

The current balance on your bank account is the total amount of money in the account. But that doesn’t mean it’s all available to spend. Some of the funds included in your current balance may be from deposits you made or checks you wrote that haven’t cleared yet, in which case they’re not available for you to use.

For Savings, Current Account and BDO Cash Card your available balance is real-time and will change throughout the day based on your activities. For Time Deposit and Consumer Loan Accounts, balances are based on the previous day’s balances.

Your available balance is the amount you can spend right now. Current balances include all of your money, including all available funds PLUS funds that are being held. For example, assume your available and current balance are both $50, and you swipe your debit card at a restaurant for $20.

Unavailable funds, which are also known as uncollected funds, essentially represent a certain amount deposited into an account that is yet to be cleared and/or reconciled by a respective banking institution. The institution needs to verify and account for the funds before they can be accessible to the account holder.

So if you’ve made a few purchases since your statement closing date (the date that one billing cycle closes and after which the next begins), then your current balance will be higher than your statement balance. Paying your statement balance in full before or by its due date can help you save money on interest charges.

The current balance on a credit card is the amount you owe on your account, minus any pending purchases or payments. All of the purchases you’ve made that have been processed by your credit card company since you last paid your bill are included in the current balance.

The current balance measures current by measuring the force between two parallel wires carrying that current. It provides the connection from Newton’s laws and the gravitational force to the Ampere, and hence, to the Coulomb. The slope of ammeter reading versus measured current should be 1.