Glossary
Transaction Hold
A transaction hold reserves the ability to complete a financial action — moving funds, committing a transfer — provisionally, before final confirmation, rather than either fully committing it immediately or not reserving anything at all. This gives a window in which additional checks, whether automated or manual, can still catch a problem before the action becomes irreversible, without the transaction sitting in a fully ambiguous or entirely unprotected state in the meantime.
Getting the hold's duration right is its own design problem: too short, and a check that needs more time to complete gets bypassed by the hold simply expiring first; too long, and legitimate transactions are left in limbo longer than the actual risk they pose would justify.