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Refunding payments

We may be able to refund payments on your behalf, however, we review this on a case by case basis as refunds are paid directly from our bank account before balancing this out against your pending/collected payments. 

 Requesting a refund

If you need high value or high volume of payments refunding we recommend doing this outside of GoCardless. If there are only a few payments you need refunding though and you have sufficient pending payments to cover them then please submit a ticket with the following details: 
  • Name and email address of the customer(s)
  • Payment ID (Begins PM000... you can locate this in the top left-hand corner of the dashboard when viewing an individual payment)
  • The amount to be refunded

Our team will then review your request and get back to you.

 
The process
 
A refund must be requested via the contact form so that we have a record of it.
 
Once we receive your request the following will happen...
 
 
1. Confirmation
 
You will receive a reply within 24 hours of sending your request confirming if we can issue the refund.
 
 
2. Refund processed

Your refund will be processed on or after the payment’s payout date. If the payment has not yet reached this status when you send your request, we will advise on the day it will be processed in the confirmation you receive.

Both yourself and your customer will receive an automated notification email when the refund is actioned.

 

3. Customer receives refund

The customer will receive the funds back into their bank account within one working day of being processed.

 
4. Settlement of refund
 
If we refund a payment that has been paid out to you, we will settle the amount of the refund against your next payments.

You will be able to view the refund as a ‘debit’ within the breakdown of the payout it was settled against.
 
 
Charges
 
We do not charge any additional fees to process a refund. The customer will receive the full amount of the payment back into their bank account.
 
We do not refund the original transaction fee collected when successfully collecting the payment from the customer.
 
 

Refund Safety

GoCardless recommends that payments are not refunded within 7 days of being charged, this gives added protection against refunding unsettled payments. This means that any payment collected from your customers cannot be refunded until 7 days after the payment was charged, allowing sufficient time for the payment to settle into your account, prior to the refund request.


This period is imposed as default, however if you would like to opt-out of this safety feature, you are able to select this on the contact form linked above. 

 
 
Note about chargebacks
 
The Direct Debit scheme is not well suited to processing refunds and so payments refunded through GoCardless are sent to the customer using the Faster Payment method. Consequently, customers can still chargeback payments under the Direct Debit Guarantee, even after payments have been refunded through GoCardless.  

As a result, refunding larger payments through GoCardless offers a greater risk to both yourself (the merchant) and GoCardless as the customer can could receive the funds twice.

Due to the risk of chargebacks we will generally only agree to refund low value payments.

For larger value payments, we advise merchants to refund their customers outside of GoCardless.

 

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