Refunds

Issue full or partial refunds from the payment details page, track each refund’s status, and learn the rules that decide whether a refund can go through.

Refund a customer in full or in part from the payment’s details page. The refund goes to the original payment method, and Dodo Payments emails the customer a receipt when it succeeds.

Initiate Refund

You can initiate two types of refunds from the Payment Details Page:

• Full refund: Refunds the entire payment amount to the customer.
• Partial refund: Refunds part of the payment. You set the amount to refund for each item.

To begin, click Initiate Refund and choose Full refund or Partial refund. The refund goes through only if it meets every refund rule.

Partial refunds are useful when only a portion of the order needs to be refunded.

To refund from your backend, call Create Refund with the payment_id. For a partial refund, pass items, each with an item_id (the product_id or add-on ID) and the amount to refund.

The amount is in USD cents, whatever the currency of the payment. Dodo Payments converts it to the payment’s currency. For example, to refund the equivalent of 5.00 USD, pass 500, even if the customer paid in EUR or INR. Omit amount to refund the whole item.

Details Required for Refund

• Refund Amount: The amount to be refunded. For a partial refund, enter the amount for each item you want to return to the customer. The dashboard shows each item’s refundable amount and prevents you from refunding more than the original payment.

• Refund Reason: The reason for the refund, recorded with the refund. The dashboard requires at least 5 characters, and the API accepts up to 3,000.

Before you confirm, the dashboard shows the price refund, the tax refund, and the total refund to the customer.

Refund Rules

1. The payment must have succeeded.
2. Our standard policy is that a customer must request a refund within 7 days of making the purchase, and requests after that are invalid. To leave room for edge cases, merchants have a longer window of 30 days from the payment date (default) to process full or partial refunds from the dashboard. After 30 days, refunds are not allowed.
3. The refund, together with any earlier refunds on the payment, can’t exceed the amount paid.
4. Only one refund per payment can be in progress. A refund with the status pending or review must finish before you start another.
5. Your balance must cover the refund amount.
6. In live mode, live payments must be enabled for your business.
7. Refunds are issued to the original payment method used by the customer.

If any rule is not met, the refund request is denied. For help, contact [e-mail].

When Your Balance Can’t Cover a Refund

Dodo Payments pays a refund from your wallet balance, not from the original payment. If your balance is lower than the refund amount, the refund is denied, even though the payment succeeded.

Your balance can be lower than a payment’s full amount for three reasons:

• A payment adds less than the customer paid. Your wallet is credited with the payment, and then the tax on it and the Dodo Payments transaction fees are debited. A full refund returns more than the payment added to your balance.
• A payout moves your balance to your bank. On each payout date, your eligible balance is transferred to your bank account. Right after a payout, your balance may not cover a refund for a payment made before it.
• Other entries use the same balance. Earlier refunds, disputes, and their fees are deducted from your balance when they occur.

When a refund goes through, the Balances ledger records these entries:

Ledger entry	Effect on your balance
Refund	Debit of the amount returned to the customer
Tax Reversal	Credit of the tax on the refunded amount
Refund Fees	Debit of the fee for processing the refund

The Payment Fees entry has no reversal, so Dodo Payments does not return the transaction fees on the original payment when you refund it.

To issue a refund that your balance can’t cover:

1. Check your balance under Payouts → Balances.
2. Wait until new payments raise your balance, and then initiate the refund. Refunds must be initiated within the refund window, so don’t wait past it.
3. If the refund can’t wait, email [e-mail] from your registered email address with the payment ID.

The balance rule also applies in test mode. To test a refund end to end, including the refund.succeeded webhook, complete enough test payments that your test-mode balance covers the refund amount.

Refund Status

Track the progress of your refund with these statuses:

Status	Description	Possible Reason
succeeded	The refund was processed.	—
pending	The refund was submitted to the payment processor and is awaiting completion.	—
review	The payment processor is reviewing the refund before it completes.	A risk or compliance check on the refund
failed	The refund could not be processed.	The payment was disputed, or a bank issue

Dodo Payments sends the refund.succeeded or refund.failed webhook when a refund reaches a final status. See Refund Webhooks.

Refund Network Reference

A succeeded refund gets a reference number from the card network or the bank. Give this number to your customer when they can’t find the refund, so they can trace it with their bank.

The reference appears on the refund details sheet and the refund page, with a copy button. Its heading shows the kind of reference:

Reference	API value
Acquirer reference number (ARN)	acquirer_reference_number
System trace audit number (STAN)	system_trace_audit_number
Retrieval reference number (RRN)	retrieval_reference_number
Refund reference number	other

• The reference is usually available 1 to 3 business days after the refund succeeds. Until then, the refund shows Not available yet. After it arrives, the dashboard shows the date it was made available.
• Funds can take 5 to 10 business days to settle in the customer’s account.
• Failed refunds don’t show a reference.
• The refunds table has a Network reference column. It is visible on the payment page, and you can turn it on from Edit columns on the Refunds page and the customer page.

In the API, the refund object carries network_reference and network_reference_type. Both are null until the reference is available. They appear on Get Refund Detail, List Refunds, and the refunds of a payment. The refund.succeeded webhook carries the same fields, but the reference usually arrives after the webhook is sent and no second webhook follows. To get the reference, read the refund from the API.

Refunds Page

The Refunds tab on the Transactions page lists every refund, with its amount, status, refund ID, associated payment, refund type, date, and reason:

• To open the Payment Details Page for a refund’s payment, click its ID in the Associated Payment column.
• Refunds are exported from Settings → Reports. The Adjustments Report covers refunds and disputes together, as CSV or XLSX.

The Refunds page looks like this:

To read refunds from your backend, use List Refunds and Get Refund Detail.

Refund Receipt

When a refund succeeds, Dodo Payments emails the customer. The email shows the refund amount, status, Refund ID, original payment amount, and refund date, and links to the Refund Receipt. The Refund Successful email is on by default; you can turn it off under Customer Emails. To fetch the receipt from your backend, use Get Refund Receipt.

Refund Receipt Template:

The refund receipt includes:

• Refund ID: The unique identifier for the refund, with the ID of the refunded payment.
• Refund type: Whether the refund is full or partial.
• Refund amount: The amount refunded to the customer, with its taxable amount and tax amount.
• Refund date: The date the refund was processed.
• Refund method: The payment method the refund was sent to.
• Refund reason: The reason for the refund.