Introduction

This guide explains how to give money back to a Payer with the Ping Payments™ API, and what happens to
the money behind the scenes so you can plan for it.

The one rule behind everything

Ping holds your Payers' money on behalf of you and your Merchants. Ping is not allowed to take risk on those funds: it can never pay a refund out of its own money, or out of money that belongs to somebody else. A refund is only sent to the Payer once the money for it is in place.

Where that money comes from depends on how far the Payment Order has come:

Payment Order is…	The refund is paid from…	Can it fail for lack of funds?
`OPEN` or `CLOSED`	The Payment itself. Ping still holds it and nobody has been paid yet.	No
`SPLIT`	Nothing. The refund is refused until the order has settled.	–
`SETTLED`	The item recipient: the Merchant or Liquidity Account the item was sold for.	Yes
`SETTLED`, with a reserve	As above, and your reserve steps in if the item recipient cannot cover the refund.	Only if the reserve is short too