What is a refund?¶

A refund is a new return of money or value linked to an earlier payment. It does not erase the original transaction or by itself explain why value was returned.

The return has its own lifecycle¶

A merchant, seller, provider or recipient may initiate a full or partial refund. It can have a separate reference, amount, currency, initiation time, processing status and destination. Appearance in the customer's account may follow later.

The reason may be cancellation, duplicate charging, returned goods, service failure, fraud reporting or commercial choice. The return can go to the original instrument, a wallet balance or another route, so it does not automatically prove the original payer obtained it.

Preserve the linked pair¶

Retain original and refund records, amounts retained and returned, all references, times, initiator and destination. Compare order, delivery, cancellation and communications where purpose matters.

Distinguish a merchant-initiated refund from a processing reversal and a chargeback dispute.