In this article, you will find everything you need to know about Credit Card Hold on Experiences: what it is, how to activate it, and how it works for you and your guests.
Summary
What is Credit Card Hold on Experiences and why use it?
How to activate Credit Card Hold on an experience
Troubleshooting & FAQs
💡 What you need to know
Credit Card Hold is a debit authorization — not a charge. Your guest's card is held for the experience price, but no money is taken unless you decide to capture it (typically in case of a no-show or a late cancellation). You can now apply this rule experience by experience, instead of being limited to one rule per shift.
1. What is Credit Card Hold on Experiences and why use it?
A Credit Card Hold protects you against no-shows on the experiences that matter most — without charging your guests in advance.
Until now, you could only set a Credit Card Hold at the shift level. That meant either applying the same rule to every experience in that shift, or none at all. Now, you can pick the payment strategy for each experience individually — your high-ticket experiences are secured, and your casual ones keep following your existing service rules.
Available payment options per experience:
None — no payment required, standard booking.
Prepayment — guest pays the experience price at booking.
Credit Card Hold — guest's card is authorized for the experience price; nothing is captured unless you choose to.
What doesn't change: your existing shift-level Credit Card Hold rules remain in place. Payouts, PSP integration, and cancellation rules are unchanged.
2. How to activate Credit Card Hold on an experience
Two clicks from your experience settings.
Go to Settings → Experiences → [your experience] → Payment, then pick Credit Card Hold in the three-state selector. The hold amount automatically matches the experience price — no manual entry needed. Save, and the rule applies to all future reservations on this experience.
A payment-type icon now appears on your experience list so you can see, at a glance, which experiences have which rule.
The rule also applies to manual reservations. When you create a reservation manually in ZenchefOS on an experience with Credit Card Hold configured, the hold is applied at creation — same logic as guest-side bookings.
3. Troubleshooting & FAQs
Common issues
The Credit Card Hold option is greyed out — Set a total price on the experience first. Credit Card Hold cannot be activated on a free experience.
I changed my experience price after activating CCH — Your hold amount updates automatically. You'll see a confirmation: "Your Credit Card Hold amount has been updated to match the new experience price (€X)."
A reservation has multiple experiences with different payment rules — Prepayment always wins. If at least one of the experiences in the booking requires prepayment, the guest pays the prepayment and the Credit Card Hold is not applied on the other experience.
Partial capture not available — If you capture, it's the full experience price. Partial capture is on our roadmap.
FAQ
Will my guest see the hold on their statement? — Yes, a €0 authorization is placed at checkout. No money is taken at booking time.
What happens if my guest cancels? — Depends on your cancellation rule: automatic release, automatic release outside the cancellation window (capture inside it), or manual release.
Can I still configure a Credit Card Hold at the shift level? — Yes, existing shift-level rules still work. If both are set on the same booking, the experience-level rule wins.
Which markets is this available in? — Available on every Zenchef market.