Issuing a Refund

You can issue a refund right in the Merchant Portal or via BlueSnap's APIs.

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Same-Day Refunds

For card and ACH transactions, if you issue a refund the same day as the initial transaction, the transaction is a void, rather than a refund.

Issue a Refund in the Merchant Portal

1. In the Merchant Portal, go to Transactions > Issue Refund.

2. Enter the Reference Number, then click Go. If you do not know the reference number, you can obtain it using the shopper's information. Refer to Finding an order.

3. Set the refund amount.
   
   By default, the refund is set to the full amount of the original transaction; you can change the amount if you prefer to issue a partial refund. You can also issue multiple refunds to the same order, up to the maximum refund amount.
   
   Any taxes charged on the initial transaction are refunded based on the calculation from the original transaction and cannot be changed.

4. (Optional) If you want to issue a refund on a subscription order, but you do NOT want to cancel the subscription, ensure that this checkbox is NOT selected:

5. (Optional) Select a Refund Reason and enter a description of the reason.
   

6. Verify that all the information is correct.
   IMPORTANT: Make sure the refund order is correct before clicking Process Refund.
   After you click this button, the action CANNOT be undone.

7. Click Process Refund.
   After the process is complete, "Refund completed successfully" displays at the top of the page.

Keep in mind that refunds can only be issued for transactions less than 2 years old.

Dual Control Mode

Dual control mode is designed for merchant refund protection. With this mode, a refund request must be approved by a second user before it can be processed. This functionality is only available if there is more than one user under the merchant account:

1. Turn Dual Control on or off for all users through the merchant admin account.

2. Refund requests will be displayed on the review table before they are approved. If the request is pending, it will display: "Refund request is waiting for 2nd approval" under Order Flow Log > Action Description.
3. A second user (different from the one who initiated the refund request) can review the refund request by clicking on the Review button to check transaction details.
4. After the second user reviews the transaction details, they can approve or decline the refund request. If the request is approved, the shopper will be refunded. If the refund request is declined, no refund will be issued.

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   Note

   We support batch approve/decline. You can approve/decline multiple refund requests at once by selecting the corresponding checkboxes on the left of each request.

5. All refund requests are visible under the Completed tab after being approved or declined.

Issuing a Refund with the BlueSnap APIs

If you are using either of BlueSnap's APIs, you can process a refund by sending a refund request for a specific transaction or order.

For complete details, refer to:

• Payment API: Refunds
• Extended Payment API: Refund Invoice

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Colorado Delivery Fee

Per Colorado tax law, the Colorado delivery fee is not refundable except for cancelled, chargeback or voided transactions. This includes the tax portion except in the case of certain chargebacks.

Refund Operating Account

A refund operating account is an account with funds that are set aside (not paid out) to enable you to issue refunds even when your account balance is low. Your refund operating account balance accrues from sales, and once your refund reserve amount is met, all additional sales are applied to your next payout.

You may modify your refund operating account amount at any time. If you increase the amount, a portion of your available payout funds are held to increase the refund operating account balance to the newly defined amount. If you decrease the amount, the leftover balance is added to your next payout.

Note: If your refund operating account balance results in insufficient funds to generate a payout, you do not receive a payout and no payout notification is sent.

Pending Refunds

If you try to process a refund but do not have sufficient funds in your account to cover the full refund amount, the transaction is labeled with a pending refund status. It is added to a queue with any other pending refunds on your account.

Pending refunds in the queue cannot process until you have a positive account balance, which you can achieve with new sales. When your account has a positive balance, the pending refund queue begins processing automatically. When using the Order Locator, orders with pending refunds are displayed in their own column and include the pending refund amount.

If you receive regional payouts, BlueSnap does not create payouts for any region that has pending refunds. For example, if you have a pending refund for the US processing region, you do not receive any US payouts until the pending refund is processed and the pending refund queue is cleared.

Enable pending refunds

Contact BlueSnap Merchant Support to enable pending refunds on your account.

1. The pending refund job runs every 3 hours.

2. Once your account balance is positive, any pending refunds will automatically be processed in chronological order.

3. If there are not enough funds to process the oldest pending refund, the queue will stop processing until there are enough funds available. This will be the case even if you have the balance to cover newer pending refunds in the queue.

   Split transactions are the exception to this rule. A split transaction occurs when a sale is split between a merchant and a vendor (see split payments) With split transactions, if there aren't enough vendor funds available, the queue will move on to the next pending refund instead of stopping.

Manually Process a Pending Refund

If you have a positive account balance, you can manually process any pending refund via the BlueSnap Merchant Portal or via our Refund API.

Cancel a pending refund

There are two ways to cancel a pending refund from the Merchant Portal:

1. Navigate to the Issue Refund page on the left-hand menu. Locate the order and from the Select Operation dropdown, choose the Cancel Pending Refund option.
2. Navigate to the Find a Transaction page on the left-hand menu. Locate the order using the available fields and click the Cancel Pending Refund button.

Pending Refund Queue

A pending refund will be removed from the pending refund queue in the following cases:

• The pending refund is manually processed
• The pending refund is manually canceled
• If a charge with a pending refund is disputed by the cardholder’s bank, the pending refund will be removed from the pending refunds queue and a dispute will be created​.
• If a refund is in a pending status for more than 3 months, it will be deleted.
• If any action is taken on a linked invoice, such as a partial refund, a full refund, or a chargeback.

Webhook Notifications

If you have already enabled IPNs the Pending Refund IPN is automatically activated so you receive a notification when a pending refund occurs. You also receive this IPN when a pending refund is deleted after 3 months of unsuccessful processing attempts. Learn more about setting up IPNs here.

Email Notifications

If you enable refund notification emails, an email is sent to you every time a pending refund occurs. The refund email can be enabled or disabled under Email Settings in the Merchant Portal.

Reporting

You can use the Merchant Portal or the Reporting API to access the Pending Refund Report.

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