---
title: "Hold a Transaction to Respond to Suspicious Activity"
slug: "hold-a-transaction-to-respond-to-suspicious-activity"
updated: 2026-03-07T00:26:20Z
published: 2026-03-07T00:30:27Z
stale: true
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://resource.payrix.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Hold a Transaction to Respond to Suspicious Activity

You can manually create holds on transactions that are suspicious or otherwise high-risk. This can be useful while you’re still configuring your decision or policy criteria to automate the process. This article shows you how to create a hold on a suspicious merchant transaction, review the transaction, and release the hold after review.

## Create and Respond to a Transaction Hold

Complete all steps in the following sections to hold a transaction, review the transaction for risk factors, and release the transaction hold.

### Create a Transaction Hold

Complete the following steps to place a hold on a transaction:

1. Select **Payment History**under Payments in the left navigation panel.
2. Select the listed transaction you want to hold to access the Transaction Details****page.
3. Click **Hold**to send the transaction to the Transactions queue on the Risk Management page.

### Review the Held Transaction

Complete the following steps to review risk information about the merchant and the specific transaction to determine how you want to release the hold:

1. Select **Risk** under Admin in the left navigation panel.
2. Select the **Transactions** tab at the top of the page, then locate your held transaction.
3. Select the listing to access the Transaction Underwriting page for the transaction.
4. Click **Underwriting** and **Transaction Risk**in the bottom-right corner to review risk information about the merchant and the transaction.

> [!TIP]
> **Tip**
> 
> When reviewing transactions, the highest-risk activity to monitor for are transaction fraud, credit risk, merchant fraud, and money laundering.

### Respond to the Hold

1. After reviewing the risk information associated with the merchant and transaction, return to the Transaction Underwriting****page.
2. Release the hold by voiding the transaction, reserving the transaction funds, or approving the transaction:
  - **Void Transaction:** Cancel processing and return the funds to the merchant’s customer.
  - **Send To Reserve:** Allow processing and funding, but withhold the funds from the merchant for a specific time if anticipating transaction refunds or chargebacks.
  - **Approve:** Release the hold and allow processing and funding of the transaction as normal.

**Result:** The transaction hold is released based on your choice to either return the funds to the merchant’s customer or process the transaction as normal, possibly reserving the funds for later resolution of customer issues.

## Next Steps

After the transaction has been held, reviewed, and released, review the following articles for related topics:

- [Hold a Merchant Boarding to Perform a Review](/v1/docs/hold-a-merchant-boarding-to-perform-a-review): Place a new merchant’s boarding status to Manual Review to perform a risk review before boarding.
- [Automate Risk Review with Policies](/v1/docs/automate-risk-review-with-policies): Use the policies feature to automate future transaction holds or merchant boarding reviews with different risk criteria.

Additionally, view the following content in the Risk and Compliance Guide:

- See [Partner Transaction Monitoring Best Practices](/v1/docs/partner-transaction-monitoring-best-practices) for guidance on identifying transaction risks.
- See the [Merchant Monitoring Risk Guide](/v1/docs/merchant-monitoring-risk-guide) for steps to mitigate risks associated with merchants’ payment transactions and other activities.

A risk automation configuration available to be set on Groups of entities to apply a review, and action/inaction of specified risk criteria as a decision rule, using the outcome of the risk review to determine whether to execute the decision action.

A comprehensive risk management system that automates and streamlines risk decision-making processes for entire portfolios or individual entities. Similar to decisions, policies use a rule-and-action logic; however, policies also integrate third-party risk services like GIACT, LexisNexis, and Equifax for more comprehensive risk review. (Note: Policies contain a component called decisions, which is different than Group risk decisions set from the Group profile.)

An entity that can process transactions and has been onboarded through a Payrix Pro partner.

The movement of funds between a customer (cardholder or eCheck account holder) and a merchant to purchase a good or service.