Refunds Guide: Why Do Refunds Take Time to Reach Customers?

Your amount will be refunded to you in 1000002345 days – Every business ever. 

Has this ever happened to you while making an online purchase?

1. You returned an item, and the money was promised to be credited to your account within 5-10 working days, or
2. Your transaction was not completed but money was still deducted from your account

You would expect that the refund would reflect instantly in your account, or want online refund status, right? Why then does it take so long?

P.S.  If you run a business, you can actually refund instantly with Razorpay and get the online refund status right away. Click on the link to find out how.

But if you’re a consumer, let’s take you behind the scenes to see why payments fail, what are legitimate cases for refunds, what you should expect and do as a customer to get your refund.

Recommended read: Why Do Online Payments Fail?

How do Refunds work?

Two common cases related to online refunds

We will delve into two common cases related to online refunds and discuss the processes involved. Understanding these scenarios can help shed light on why refunds may take some time to process.

Case 1: Refund initiated and issued by merchant on their customer’s request

The customer transacts successfully on a website for purchase of certain goods or services. Due to some reason, like delivery of good not being made or quality of services being poor, the customer requests a refund from the business.

What does refund initiated mean?

Refund initiated means the merchant or business has initiated the process of refunding your money to original source of payment.

How does Refund process work?

The online business now makes a refund request or provide online refund status via their payment gateway. The payment gateway conveys this information to their acquiring bank (the bank with which they have an account) via APIs.

This acquiring bank has to communicate with the issuing bank (the bank in which the customer account/card is held) which was used for the payment and raise a refund request.

Ideally, the refund request is accepted, filed and then processed by the issuing bank to provide online refund status to the customer. On completion of this process, refunds are reflected in the customer’s account/card balance.

What does refund processed mean?

Refund processed means merchant has completed the process and the amount has been transferred to your payment source.

Why refunds take 5-10 days?

An online refund status thus involves an exchange of information between 3-4 different parties.  Each of these parties have their own mechanisms to file the refund request, map it to their respective payments that were originally made and then process it forward.

Many of these processes in the banking ecosystem are not fully automated and require manual oversight. Given the number of parties involved and the variance in their processes to handle refunds, it takes 5-10 days for them to be credited back to the customer account. So, if you are waiting for an online refund status then you will have to wait for some time. 

When does refund extend beyond 5-10 days?

There are about 5 major payment gateways working in the country, 5-6 major acquiring banks who help process payments and about 60 banks which allow for functionality of payments via netbanking or their card network.

Each refund has to go through at least these three parties and flow of communication for each refund varies as per the combination of these 3 parties. Sometimes a refund request gets dropped in the process due to system/network failures and you won’t get the online refund status. Whenever this happens, the refund may stay in limbo, until the refund request is initiated again.

Case 2: Transaction fails but money is still deducted

The situation

A customer tries to complete a payment on a website but the payment shows up as failed. However, the customer is notified or get online refund status by his/her bank that money has been deducted already.

How are payments processed?

An online payment involves several steps involving multiple parties such as:

1. the online website the customer is transacting on,
2. the payment gateway helping collect sensitive details (like OTP or IPIN) and processing payments,
3. an acquiring bank which works with the payment gateway and helps route the payment, provide the online refund status and finally,
4. the customer’s own bank, popularly known as issuing bank

For the purpose of understanding the impact of failed payments on refunds or online refund status, we will only look at the most relevant steps here. Once the 2FA (2-factor authentication) is complete a payment request is made to the issuing bank which accepts the payment request and debits the required amount from the customer’s account balance.

The issuing bank then confirms to the acquiring bank on the status of the payment (if it’s successful). This is then communicated to the end customer via the payment gateway. Here is the process for the communication of a successful payment and online refund status once the money has been deducted from customer’s account.

Payment successful notification after customer A/C debit

How do payments fail? Why are refunds required?

If the communication fails at any step after the customer account has been charged, the payment fails, and the customer has a legitimate case for seeking a refund or online refund status.

There can be various reasons for either of steps 1,2 or 3 failing but the most prominent one in our experience is network connectivity. Until all steps are complete, the customer’s device needs to be connected to the internet for the customer to be notified about the online refund status.

Also, payments can show up as failed if the payment status is not updated either (Step 1) by issuing banks or the acquiring bank (Step 2) despite being collected. The payment gateway does not receive any notification in these cases just as the customer’s online refund status and the online business themselves.

Payments work on several technical infrastructures and all of them are not as optimized to solve such issues. As the classic adage goes – any chain is as strong as its weakest link. This could not be more true for online payments.

How does Razorpay handle refunds?

A payment gateway’s job doesn’t stop if they do not receive a successful payment status from the banks. There are a couple of things that it can do to retrieve a failed payment and check again for updates regarding its online refund status.

Our Payment Gateway keeps polling acquiring banks periodically, to see if a payment that was called out as “failed” before has been updated to successful. If it has, we inform the business where the transaction was done and give them an option to collect the payment then, one of 2 things happen here –

1. The online business accepts the change in online refund status, agrees to collect the payment and provides the service/good that was promised earlier to the customer.
2. The online business decides not to collect the payment as it is no longer in position to service the customer at the agreed terms (could be time of delivery, cost of purchase, inventory issues, etc). In this case, they have to the online refund status of the payment to the customer who gets the money in their account in a period of 5-10 working days.

At Razorpay, we have developed these monitoring systems so that the refunds are handled without impacting the end customers in such circumstances. In instances where payment/online refund status can still not tracked, we attempt to resolve issues further with the banks via manual intervention.

In case of payments failure due to a breakdown in communication between a payment gateway and the online website, a good payment gateway should have a fallback mechanism for reconciling payments or instant online refund status for both the parties and updating their correct status in near real-time to tell the customer about the know your refund status

At Razorpay, we encourage our client businesses to receive the online refund status of each payment through both a website level integration and also on their servers through webhooks.

When a transaction is marked as failed, we give these online businesses an option to check via our Webhooks API if the transaction has genuinely failed or if its a false alarm. If found that the transaction is successful, the online business has the option to carry out the transaction as normal otherwise the online refund status will be updated.

Our limitations as a Payment Gateway

The refunds problem is deep and reconciliation or online refund status across all payment networks is a challenge. For a payment to be complete it has to go through several stages and becomes difficult to track. Say you are transacting on a website and what you see as a customer is an Order ID.

This Order ID is now communicated to a payment gateway which assigns a payment ID of its own and calls it Payment ID. The acquiring bank receives this payment ID from the payment gateway and forwards it to the issuing bank with its own term Transaction ID or yet another payment ID to inform the customer about the online refund status.

You can see where this is going. This payment gateway refund process structure repeats itself when a refund request is made and a refund ID is generated by the merchant or the payments platform. As there is no universal tracking mechanism across the system, there are gaps through which the online refund status of payments or refunds can sometimes be temporarily lost.

Another classic case is when the promised service/good has not been delivered by the online business to the customer, as promised. In this case, the payment gateway is also not in a position to influence the day to day workings of an online business. The best way to proceed is to communicate with the merchant themselves and know about online refund status. 

Although, in the case of fraud or repetitive failure to provide goods or services as promised, Razorpay does retain the right to intervene and assist end customers by providing the online refund status.

Keeping calm and setting realistic expectations

The entire money movement in online payments is via escrow accounts, which are jointly monitored by payment gateways and acquiring banks, which means payment gateways cannot make earnings from money they hold or move on behalf of their customers. So, sit tight and soon you will receive the online refund status. 

If it were solely up to us we’d have your refund processed instantly. But, onle refund usually depend on the acquiring bank and issuing banks for processing the balance back into your account. The amount of time taken to process the online refund status also depends on the mode of payment used to make the transaction.

The standard is 5-7 working days, something most of us are familiar with. Each mode of payment, however, has a different time frame for refunds or online refund status which we have provided below. If it exceeds the following, it definitely merits a further inquiry.

Days here represents business days which means Saturdays, Sundays and bank holidays are excluded. 

Keep in mind that refunds are always credited back to the source mode of payment. That means if you’ve made the transaction through a digital wallet your money cannot be credited to your bank account.

Imagine if your refund has been initiated but your account still hasn’t been credited even after 7 days! Don’t worry. Your money is still safe, you will get the refund status asap. There are slight chances that the refund processing has failed and will have to be reinitiated.

At Razorpay, we are truly devoted to providing the best payment experience not just for the businesses who work with us, but also for their end customers. We truly believe that if online payments have to replace cash, then it has to provide the same ease of use providing the online refund status on time. 

Unfortunately, we still see instances in which online refund status are not issued on time because of the system failing overall, but the payments infrastructure in India is changing rapidly. The next 2-3 years will see millions of first-time internet users in India and it is our ambition to provide them a seamless online payments experience with instant UPI refund time.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why does it take so long for refunds to reflect in my account or provide online refund status?

Refunds can take 5-10 days to process due to the exchange of information between multiple parties involved in the refund process. Manual oversight, varying refund processes, and the number of parties involved contribute to the time it takes for refunds to be credited.

2. What causes refunds to take longer than 5-10 days?

Refunds can extend beyond the usual timeframe due to system or network failures during the refund process. If a refund request gets dropped or fails to go through, it may result in a delay until the refund request is initiated again.

3. What happens when a transaction fails but money is deducted from my account?

If a transaction fails but money is still deducted from your account, you have a legitimate case for seeking a refund or online refund status. Communication failures at any step of the payment process can lead to payment failures and the need for a refund.

4. How does Razorpay handle refunds?

Razorpay actively monitors failed payments and attempts to retrieve them by checking for updates on their online refund status. They provide options for businesses to collect payments if the transaction is successful or initiate refunds if the business is unable to provide the promised service. They also engage in manual intervention if necessary to resolve issues with banks.

5. What is the timeframe for different modes of payment to receive refunds or online refund status?

The standard timeframe for refunds is 5-7 working days. However, the specific refund time varies depending on the mode of payment used. For credit/debit cards, it can take 5-10 days, for net banking it’s 2 days, for wallets it’s instant, and for UPI it’s 2-7 days.