Canceling / refunding a transaction

This page presents the differences between transaction cancellation and refund.

Examples of use cases

• Cancellation feature : a user has ordered two products from you. They are definitively out of stock. You cancel the transaction so that the buyer’s account is not debited.
• Refund feature: the client has returned the product as it did not match their requirements, the product has been damaged during shipping, etc. The Merchant must refund the buyer.

The difference between cancellation and refund

The cancellation of a transaction must be done before the capture (or banking) of this same transaction. The capture occurs at 00:05 for the transactions of the previous day (00:00 to 23:59).

If the transaction has been captured, with the Cardholder debit done, a refund will be required. The amount of this refund is less than or equal to the original amount of the transaction. The refund operation therefore allows a buyer's bank account to be re-credited. The merchant's payment account is debited with the corresponding amount.

Cancel

Cancellation cannot be partial. Since cancellation occurs before capture in the bank, the buyer should not see any operations on their account.

Cancellation and prepaid cards

In case of a payment made with a prepaid card and authorized by the issuer, the Buyer's bank account is debited immediately, without waiting for the payment to be captured in the bank (as in case of most bank cards). If the Merchant cancels the transaction before capture in the bank, the payment method holder's account is not updated in real time (except in case of automated fuel dispensers). The Buyer's balance will be restored at the end of the authorization validity period, which can be up to 30 days depending on the type of the card.

Refund

Refunds are always made for operations captured in the bank (but not necessarily already credited to the merchant account, it depends on payment delays).

Refund refusal

For the CB network, we indicate the code and reason for refusal returned by the buyer' s bank. If the refund request is made from the Merchant Back Office, a warning message is displayed:

"The financial institution has refused the refund request for internal reasons: [for example, the refusal code: "12: invalid transaction"]. Please refund your buyer using another payment method (check, transfer...)".

For example, if the refund request is made on a card in opposition, the code and reason for refusal will be "59: suspicion of fraud" for certain acquirers. See the list of return codes specific to the CB network for more details.

In summary

Non-captured transactions:

• "Cancellation" feature only.
• Via REST Web Service: Transaction/Cancel.

Captured transactions:

• “Refund” feature only, cancellation is no longer possible.
• Via REST Web Service: Transaction/Refund.