When can a Refund be performed?

Before initiating a Refund through the API, certain conditions must be met regarding the state of the Payment Order, the Payment, and the capabilities of the payment provider.

1. The Payment being refunded must be COMPLETED. No other status can be refunded.
2. The Payment Order must be in an OPEN, CLOSED or SETTLED state. An order that has been split but not yet settled cannot be refunded. Its funds are allocated but not yet booked to the recipients, so there is nothing to take them back from. Settle it, then refund.
3. The payment provider used for the original Payment must support native refunds. Jump to Provider with native refunds for more details.
4. The Payment being refunded must fall within a predefined refund threshold. This threshold is agreed upon during onboarding with Ping Payments.

Two further conditions apply once the Payment Order has SETTLED, because by then the money has been booked to the merchants, tenants and liquidity accounts it was settled to, and paying the Payer means reclaiming it from them.

5. Refunding settled items must be enabled on your Tenant. It is off by default and is not self-service. Contact Ping at [email protected] to have it turned on.
6. Each recipient must have enough settled funds to cover its share. It does not have to be the money from this Payment, which may well have been paid out already. Any settled balance the recipient holds will do, so a Merchant taking payments daily normally has coverage regardless of when the refunded order settled. A Refund that cannot be covered is refused before the provider has been asked for anything, so the Payer is never charged back.

Create refund covers where the money comes from in each case, and what a rejected Refund looks like.

Providers with native refunds