How do I Refund a transaction?
What is a Refund?
A refund is the reimbursement of funds for any payment you have taken.
When will I need to perform a Refund?
If the transaction HAS already been sent for settlement, then you will need to perform a refund on the transaction. This will send your acquiring bank a refund request to credit the customer's account and transfer the funds back into their account.
As the original transaction HAS already been sent for settlement, your acquiring bank would have received information about the payment and therefore will need a refund request to cancel the payment. Your customer will therefore have both a payment debited out of their account and a refund credited into their account appearing on their card statement.
Should you wish to stop/cancel the refund, you will have until the time it is sent for settlement to VOID the refunded transaction. If the refund has already been sent for settlement, then you will need to take another payment in order to cancel it.
You can refund a transaction for any amount up to the value of the original transaction. You can even send multiple refunds for the same transaction so long as the total values of those refunds do not exceed the value of the original transaction.
How is a Refund performed via my VSP Admin area?
A refund can be performed via the VSP admin area for any amount up to the full value of the original transaction. Please be advised that once a transaction has been settled, you can no longer VOID it and will need to perform a Refund. The cut off point is midnight every night, after which the settlement files are forwarded to the respective acquiring banks. If the transaction has already been forwarded for settlement, you will need to Refund the payment.
Before logging in to your Protx VSP Admin account, you need to ensure that you have granted the Refund privilege to your 'User' that you intend to use to perform the Refund.
Once logged in, you will need to find the transaction you wish to Refund.
You can search for the transaction by using either of the search tools, 'The Daily transaction List' or the 'Find a Transaction', both from under 'Transactions' in the menu.
If you use the 'Daily Transaction List' as the search, then obviously you will need to have a fair idea of the date of the transaction and the name of the cardholder (customer). The results of the search would then be displayed as shown below;
Click on the actual 'VendorTxCode' of the payment that needs refunding. For example, if you want to Refund Test User's £1.00 transaction (as per the screenshot above), then you would click on 'VSPT-protx-test0001'
The full transaction detail will now be displayed in a new browser window - if you scroll to the bottom of the page you should see a section of further options called 'Actions' (see screenshot below)
Click on the Refund button 
If the Refund button is not displayed, it could mean one of two things:
- You have not granted the User account with the Refund privilege.
- The transaction you are trying to Refund has already been fully refunded.
N.B: The screenshot above is of a transaction that has 'not yet been settled', meaning you do have the opportunity to Void this payment if required.
(see the 'How is a Void performed via my VSP Admin area?' section)
Once the Refund button has been clicked you will be presented with a Refund confirmation screen (screenshot shown below) - you will need to enter the amount you wish to Refund (this can be a partial refund or up to the full amount), a short description (optional) and also a Password. This Password is that of the 'User' you are currently logged in as while performing the Refund.
Now just click 'Refund' button again
The Refund request will be sent to your acquiring bank for authorisation and the result will be retuned as 'Authorised' or 'Declined'.
Once the Refund has been sent for bank authorisation, depending on whether it was 'Authorised' or 'Declined', it will appear under 'Authorised Transactions' if the Refund was successful or under the 'Failed Transactions' section if the Refund was declined.
The screenshot below shows the Refund that was performed above in the 'Authorised Transactions' section of the VSP Admin account.
What are the limitations of performing a refund?
A refund uses the same card details as the original transaction and therefore you will not be able to refund:
- If the card has expired.
- If you have been provided with another card.
- If the authorisation was not taken via the Protx system.