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Refunds

Learn how to process refunds.

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You can refund a transaction easily with our APIs. To initiate a refund, send a request to the refund endpoint with the transaction ID in the URL. You can also specify the amount to be refunded in the body if you wish to make a partial refund.

The refund amount will be deducted from your available balance. Additionally, you can attach a note to the refund by specifying comments.

// Install with: npm i flutterwave-node-v3

const Flutterwave = require('flutterwave-node-v3');
const flw = new Flutterwave(process.env.FLW_PUBLIC_KEY, process.env.FLW_SECRET_KEY);
const response = await flw.Transaction.refund({
    id: transactionId,
    amount: amountToRefund,
    comments: "Product out of stock.",
});

# Install with: gem install flutterwave_sdk

require 'flutterwave_sdk'

flw = Flutterwave.new(ENV["FLW_PUBLIC_KEY"], ENV["FLW_SECRET_KEY"], ENV["FLW_ENCRYPTION_KEY"])
transactions = Transactions.new(flw)
response = transactions.initiate_a_refund {
    id: transaction_id,
    amount: amount_to_refund,
    comments: "Product out of stock.",
}
print response

curl --request POST 'https://api.flutterwave.com/v3/transactions/75923/refund' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_KEY'\
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json'\
  --data-raw '{
    "amount": 6900,
    "comments": "Product out of stock."
}'

The above code will initiate the refund process, and you will get a similar response to the one below:

{
  "status": "success",
  "message": "Transaction refund initiated",
  "data": {
    "id": 75923,
    "account_id": 73362,
    "tx_id": 908790,
    "flw_ref": "URF_1577867664541_3572735",
    "wallet_id": 74639,
    "amount_refunded": 6900,
    "status": "completed",
    "destination": "payment_source",
    "meta": {
      "source": "availablebalance"
    },
    "created_at": "2021-01-24T09:18:37.366Z"
  }
}

Refunded transactions can have different statuses depending on the payment type. Here are other refund statuses.

Refund statusExplanation
completedGeneral status for completed refunds.
completed-bank-transferStatus for completed bank transfer refunds.
completed-momoRefund status for completed mobile money transactions.
completed-mpgsRefund status for completed card transactions.
completed-offlineStatus for refunds completed manually outside of the Flutterwave application, e.g., Point-of-Sale or cash transactions.
completed-preauthA subset of completed-mpgs. This is the refund status of preauth card transactions.
pending-momoStatus for pending mobile money refunds.
processingStatus for refunds that are currently being treated. This is a transient state between initiated and completed refunds.

To verify the final status of your refunds, you can choose any of the following methods:

  • Specify a Callback URL: Include the callbackurl field in your request body, and we will send the refund details to that URL when the refund is either completed or fails.
  • Manually check the status: Use the “Fetch a refunded transaction” endpoint with the refund ID (provided in the response above) to retrieve the current status of the refund.
  • Enable webhooks: If webhooks are enabled, we will send a notification to your webhook URL with the refund details once the refund is either completed or fails.

📘

Webhooks

By default webhooks will not be sent for refunds, you will need to reach out to the internal team to enable your account to receive webhooks for refunds.

Updated 5 days ago