The 25-Day Card Authorization Rule Already Started: Auto-Cancel in October

Pre-order transactions had expired before they could be captured. You were told this starts in October, and yet it has already begun. The cause is that the date on which the window for turning a card authorization into a capture shrinks to 25 days differs from one payment provider to the next. This article lays out how to tell whether a site is in scope, and why orders that pass the deadline stay in the revenue analytics reports.

TL;DR#

• The date on which the window for turning an authorization into a capture shrinks to 25 days differs by payment provider, and at GMO Payment Gateway it already switched over on July 23, 2026
• What begins in October is the automatic cancellation of expired authorizations. But the two dates are different in kind: GMO Payment Gateway's October 2 is the day the cancellation processing itself starts, while futureshop's F-REGI October 6 is the cutoff date for orders the 25-day rule applies to. On F-REGI the first automatic cancellations appear from the end of October onward
• What decides whether a store is in scope is neither the cart nor the payment provider but the capture mode setting in the admin. In capture-at-order mode there is no direct effect
• Even when the money disappears at expiry, the revenue booked at the moment of the order stays in the report. Think about allocation through the ranking between channels, not through the size of the amounts

1. The Start Date Differs by Payment Provider#

If you use GMO Payment Gateway's PG Multi-Payment Service, the understanding that "this is an October story" stopped holding as of July 23, 2026. From that day the window in which a capture can still be made got shorter. Authorizations established up to July 22 — an authorization being the stage where credit has been reserved with the card issuer, with the capture that finalizes the charge not yet done — keep the previous 60 days, while authorizations established on or after July 23 get 25 days[1]. The count treats the day of the authorization itself as day 0[1].

How transactions past the deadline get handled starts moving only once October arrives. At GMO Payment Gateway that is October 2, 2026. Transactions authorized on or after September 6, 2026 are in scope, and from October 2 onward the cancellation runs daily on the 26th day, once 25 days have passed. Transactions established up to September 5 are not subject to the cancellation even if they run past the deadline[1].

futureshop's F-REGI runs on yet another date. The 25-day rule applies to authorized orders received on or after October 6, 2026, and if the capture is not made within 25 days of the order date (the date the authorization was obtained), F-REGI cancels the authorization automatically on its side. Authorized transactions that arose before October 6 stay on the 60-day rule, and for those F-REGI does not run an automatic cancellation even past the period, so the store cancels them itself where needed[2].

Color Me Shop's announcement writes the original period differently. It says the valid period of an authorization is being shortened from up to 90 days to 25 days, and that the change applies from July 2026 onward, in sequence by payment service[3]. If you read it as 60 days becoming 25 and built your schedule on that, the reduction is larger than you assumed, and that many more orders end up caught by the deadline.

So the memory of "from October" was almost certainly correct at the time you heard it. If expired orders are appearing in front of you now, the first thing to suspect is that the start date for the payment provider you use had already arrived back in July.

2. The Capture Mode Setting Decides Whether It Applies to You#

You run pre-orders, but you can't tell whether your own site is in scope. This is not decided by the type of cart, and not by the name of the payment provider. The dividing line is the capture mode selected in the admin.

Color Me Shop's announcement states explicitly that the ones affected are stores using "authorization-hold" mode. The two in scope are Color Me Payment (credit card payment) and Credit (PG Multi-Payment). ZEUS, SMBC GMO PAYMENT, SG System and the like provide capture-at-order only, so there is no direct effect. Whether a store is in authorization-hold mode can be checked in the capture mode setting in the admin[3].

In capture-at-order mode, it ends here. If the setting was authorization-hold, the next step is to list out the days between order and shipment. futureshop names pre-orders, made-to-order production and special orders — anything that takes 25 days or more from order to shipment — as the operations most affected[2].

But fast shipping does not automatically make a store safe. The same announcement says that even a product whose shipment completes within a few days can fall in scope. If the capture processing after shipment is delayed, it can in some cases exceed 25 days and become subject to authorization cancellation[2]. Operations that batch their capture processing on a closing date land right here. Where in the admin to check revenue is covered in Color Me Shop's access analytics. What this article looks at is the capture mode setting that sits one step before that.

It is worth checking what can be done after the deadline has passed, too. With F-REGI, from October 6, 2026 the authorization can be taken again manually from the admin. But depending on the state of the card, the re-authorization itself can fail. Depending on the card issuer, a transaction alert may be sent to the customer. A transaction that has been re-authorized falls outside 3D Secure's coverage, and depending on the contract a transaction fee is charged as well[2]. On the GMO Payment Gateway side too, the cancellation processing incurs a transaction processing fee[1].

Before the step of re-taking an authorization after it has lapsed, there is a move futureshop points to. It is the pre-order feature's "authorize later." At the time of purchase only the validity of the card is checked, and the authorization is obtained in line with the timing of shipment. Because it is taken close to shipment rather than at the moment of the order, the announcement explains, it is less exposed to the 25-day rule. It also says that if you handle products that take 25 days or more to ship, capturing within the deadline is difficult, so the feature is worth considering. Using it requires applying for F-REGI's "card number storage" feature, and the caveats are the same four as with re-authorization: the authorization failing, the transaction alert, falling outside 3D Secure's coverage, and the transaction fee[2].

There is one more case where the deadline runs shorter than 25 days: cards issued outside Japan. The same announcement gives the capture deadline as within 5 days for Visa and within 2 days for Mastercard. Capturing after that period results not in the automatic cancellation that applies to domestically issued cards but potentially in a chargeback. JCB, AMEX and Diners cards issued outside Japan, however, get the same 25 days as domestic ones[2].

3. Expired Orders Stay in the Measured Revenue#

When GMO Payment Gateway runs the cancellation, the status of that transaction changes to "returned." If a capture is to be made after that, a re-authorization or a fresh payment is required[1]. On the payment side, a transaction drops out this way.

The measurement side does not work that way. Revenue is booked at the moment of the order, so even when the money disappears afterwards, that revenue stays in the report. GA4 and RevenueScope both aggregate revenue from the information sent at the moment the purchase completes, so a cancellation that happened on the payment side is never reflected on the measurement side.

The same structure was covered in GA4 revenue doesn't match the books. There the source is returns; here it is an expired authorization. Because the mechanism — the booking being fixed at the moment of the order — is the same, the shape of the disagreement with the accounting figures comes out the same. A different pattern, where the booking itself runs higher than the actual number of orders, is in GA4 purchase counts higher than orders.

The payment admin holds nothing but payment information. GMO Payment Gateway and F-REGI both let you check the deadline and the status for each order, but which channel the visit that produced that order came through sits outside what those screens handle. The acquisition side, conversely, has the revenue booked, but carries no record of whether the money for that order ever settled. The two screens look at the same order from opposite sides, and neither holds a common field to match them on.

RevenueScope solution

That measured revenue is booked at the moment of the order is the same for GA4 and for RevenueScope. What follows from this is an operating rule: don't decide allocation on the amounts themselves. The revenue amount can still change until the money settles, so allocating budget on the basis of the month-end amount means allocating on figures that include what will later be cancelled.

If unsettled orders are contained in every channel at the same rate, on the other hand, the relative order between channels does not change. RevenueScope lines up that relative relationship. The KPI summary displays revenue, sessions, RPS, AOV, CVR and ROAS for the current period against the prior period, and the daily trend can be checked as well. RPS is revenue per session. The channel breakdown displays revenue and RPS for each channel.

Even when reading relatively, though, there are channels to take out of the judgment.

Fictional Store D's channel breakdown (illustrative)

Note: what appears on the demo screen is the sample store's sample data, refreshed daily. The table above is separate from that — the figures were assembled to explain how a channel with a small denominator looks. Neither the channel names nor the amounts match.

The highest RPS is Email's ¥300, 2x Instagram's ¥150. But there are only 200 sessions, and the ¥60,000 of revenue is two orders of ¥30,000. One of those two is a pre-order that takes more than 25 days from order to shipment, and its payment has not settled yet. If that single order is cancelled, RPS drops to ¥150 — the same level as Instagram.

Earlier I wrote that if unsettled orders are contained in every channel at the same rate, the relative order does not change. Email falls outside that condition. With a denominator of only 200 sessions and two orders, a single order decides the metric itself. Which orders are pre-orders is information the store holds, so the judgment is made by matching it against the per-channel figures RevenueScope displays.

The next move is not to decide whether to grow Email. It is to take Email out of the judgment, narrow to Instagram and Google Ads, and decide which of RPS ¥150 and ¥120 to shift allocation toward. Channels without enough denominator are held until orders accumulate.

FAQ#

Frequently asked questions#

Q. I was told this starts in October, so why are expired orders already appearing?

A. Because the start date differs by payment provider. At GMO Payment Gateway's PG Multi-Payment Service, the window in which a capture can be made has been 25 days for authorizations established on or after July 23, 2026[1]. What begins on October 2 is the cancellation processing for transactions past the deadline[1].

Q. Where do I check whether a site is in scope?

A. In the capture mode setting in the admin. Color Me Shop's announcement states explicitly that the shops affected are the ones using "authorization-hold" mode. Where a payment service that provides capture-at-order only is in use, the announcement says there is no direct effect[3].

Q. If a product ships within a few days, is it unaffected?

A. Not necessarily. futureshop's announcement says that even a product that ships within a few days can become subject to authorization cancellation — when the capture processing after shipment is delayed past 25 days[2]. Operations that batch their capture processing on a closing date belong on the checking list.

Summary#

There is one thing to do this week. Open the admin and check whether the capture mode is authorization-hold or capture-at-order. If it is capture-at-order, none of this lands on the site. If it was authorization-hold, write out the products where more than 25 days pass between order and shipment.

At GMO Payment Gateway, the window for capturing authorizations established on or after July 23, 2026 is already 25 days[1]. If the schedule was built on waiting for October, that assumption is the first thing to check.

References#

• [1] GMO Payment Gateway "[Spec] Changes to transaction specifications accompanying the credit card brand rule change (capture deadline change and others)" (2026)
• [2] futureshop "[Important: to shops using F-REGI] Changes to credit card payment specifications accompanying the Visa and Mastercard brand rule change" (2026)
• [3] Color Me Shop "[Important] Changes to credit card payment specifications accompanying the VISA and Mastercard rule change (updated 7/14)" (2026)