An automatic refresh authorization for payment transaction authorizations that are estimated to be expired can be determined ‘in house’ by a payment service provider without the need for human intervention or additional information from a merchant. If several days have gone by since a credit card payment was authorized (but not settled), a reauthorization can be automatically initiated so that a subsequent capture/settlement request will successfully transfer funds. The threshold number of days/hours can be customized by the payment service and/or merchant and may be directed to certain payment processors with high fees only. If the reauthorization fails, a capture request based on the original authorization can be attempted in order to document the denied capture request for the merchant.