Should You Worry About Random $1 Charges On Your Credit Card?

From time to time, you might take a peek at your credit card statement and notice some random $1 charges pop up in your pending transactions.

Most of the time, these charges are temporary and act as a pre-authorization or hold charge. 

However, there are other times when these charges could be a sign of fraud, specifically if the charges make it past the pending stage and onto your final credit card statement.

To learn more about what these random $1 charges mean and when to worry, keep scrolling.

So, What Are These $1 Charges?

As briefly mentioned in our intro, these random $1 charges on your credit card are typically a pre-authorized or hold charge initiated to determine whether or not your card has sufficient funds to cover the cost of the service or when the final cost of the service varies (i.e. when the final cost is based on how much gas you put into your car or awaiting any extra charges incurred on a ride service trip). 

Merchants you can expect to charge these holds include hotels, car rentals, gas stations, or ride services like Uber. 

As the terms “pre-authorized” and “hold” may suggest, these charges are temporary. Once the final price of the product or service is posted to your account, the pre-authorized or hold charge should disappear.

Before you worry too much, note that even when purchases that have failed or have been cancelled, the pre-authorized or hold charge may still appear on your pending transactions. That said, these charges shouldn’t be posted to your account. Simply give your card a couple of business days to sort through all of your transactions before investigating any further.

Why Do These $1 Charges Exist?

One reason that these charges are imposed upon your account is so merchants can validate the card in use. These charges also act as a purchase placeholder until the full cost of the service is accounted for.

In the case of card validation, a gas station or rental car company may want to ensure that the charged card has enough credit to cover the expenses at hand.

Likewise, if you book a ride service, the final cost of the trip may alter based on factors like wait times for the driver, post-trip tips and so on. A hotel might similarly hold out on charging the total cost of your stay until they’ve ensured that they don’t need to include your security deposit. Once all costs associated with the service are collected, the small pending charge will be replaced with a total charge in your posted statement. 

When to Worry About a Random $1 Charge

As previously stated, credible $1 pre-authorized or hold charges should disappear from your final credit card statement.

If you happen to see random $1 charges applied to your card’s posted statement, this could be a sign of suspicious activity.

Suspicious activity might include bad actors testing whether or not they can make small fraudulent charges to your account before attempting to make larger purchases. If they notice that their small "tester" charges go through to your posted account and are ultimately paid, this might give them the ammunition they need to cause more damage.

To prevent this from happening, connect with your bank to authenticate the source of the posted charge and to cancel any fraudulent charges if necessary. 

Conclusion

While these random $1 charges on your credit card may look suspicious at first, most of the time, they’re simply put there by a merchant that’s pre-authorizing the payment or waiting to calculate a total service cost.

In the event that you see an unfamiliar $1 charge jump from your pending transactions to your card’s posted transactions, contact your bank to rule out any fraudulent behaviour. To avoid future fraudulent attempts to charge your credit card, continue to monitor your credit card transactions regularly.