Refunds post settlement

Once a Payment Order has SETTLED, its money has been handed over to the parties in the Split Tree, and may already have been paid out to their bank accounts. To refund the Payer, Ping has to take the money back.

It is taken back from the item recipient: the Merchant or Liquidity Account the refunded item was sold for.

The request is the same as any other refund. See Create a refund.

Note: Refunds after settlement are off by default. Contact Ping at [email protected] to have them turned on for your Tenant.

Why there are safeguards

Ping is not allowed to take risk on the payments it handles. It cannot pay the Payer first and hope to collect the money from the item recipient later, and it cannot use one Merchant's money to cover another's refund. So a refund after settlement only goes ahead if the money is secured before the provider is asked to pay:

• The item recipient must hold enough settled money to cover the refund, or your
  reserve must cover it for them.
• If the refund cannot be covered, the whole refund is refused.
• The money is set aside the moment the refund is accepted, so it cannot be paid out in the meantime.

How it works

1. You create the refund.
2. Ping checks the refund can be covered, from the item recipient's settled balance or from your reserve. If not, the refund is refused with insufficient_settled_balance (orinsufficient_reserve_balance) and the refund gets the status DECLINED.
3. Ping sets the money aside. It is taken off the item recipient's balance and held until the refund is
   finished.
4. Ping asks the provider to pay the Payer.
5. The refund finishes:
   • COMPLETED: the money set aside is used to pay the Payer. The item recipient sees it as a deduction on its next payout.
   • DECLINED or FAILED: the money set aside is given back to the item recipient.

What counts as "settled money"

The item recipient's settled balance is everything settled to it that has not yet been paid out. It does not have to come from the Payment being refunded – that money may well have been paid out already. A Merchant that takes payments every day usually has enough to cover a refund, no matter when the refunded order settled.

On the payout

Each refund taken back appears as its own entry on the item recipient's next payout, so whoever reads the payout can see the deduction and which refund it belongs to. See Get Payout Entries.

Repeated refunds

An item can be refunded several times after settlement, but never for more than its own amount in total. A refund that was DECLINED or FAILED does not count towards that total.