This is not a charge, rather it's a temporary hold of funds of 8c. It's what's known as a pre-authorisation, and it will disappear within 7-10 business days of placing your order (depending on your Bank).
A pre-authorisation is like a promise from your bank that your card is valid for the pre-authorised amount. Using a pre-authorisation, we can confirm that your card details are valid without actually taking any money. We then receive a single-use token from the bank that we can use to charge your card for the full amount later.
We don't like to actually take your money until we have confirmed that the books you ordered are in stock or available within a reasonable timeframe. Sometimes a book will be out of stock at the supplier or even out of print, and we don't always know until we actually place an order with our supplier. Sometimes when we go to order a book in for you, the price from the supplier will have changed. Or we might think a book is in stock, but when we go to pack your order it's gone missing or been sold, and we need to order another in.
Due to these exceptional circumstances we don't charge your card for the full amount until we've confirmed that your books are available, and contacted you if there are any changes to the price or the expected delivery time. A pre-authorisation lets us delay payment while still confirming that your details are valid, and never storing any card details.
We're experts in books, not online credit card security. Although we follow industry security best-practices and encrypt our website to the highest standard, we don't take any chances with your financial details. All credit card details are submitted directly to our payment processor, SecurePay, and we never see your full card number or verification code. Using pre-authorisation is the how SecurePay allows us to store your details and charge them later.
Still have questions? Then please contact us!
