How do restaurants charge your card for the tip if they already ran your card and gave it back to you before giving you the receipt you wrote the tip on?
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Credit card transactions involve a few steps – when a card is swiped the first time, that is the authorization step, where the payment system checks with the card issuer to insure the transaction is valid (namely if there is enough under the limit, but there are other checks). That’s the receipt you get with your tip and total lines that you have to sign. The card holder will see a hold on their account for that amount and its not uncommon to have a certain percentage allocated to a standard tip if the merchant is a business that commonly collects them.
The restaurants bank will actually collect the money from the card issuer’s bank much later, as part of the batch process. This is usually done right before the restaurant is closed for the night, typically once a day.
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