How does a refund work?
The merchant sends a refund request for a captured payment, for the full amount or part of it, and the provider passes it to the customer’s issuer or bank. Several partial refunds can be issued against one payment, but Stripe and Adyen both say their total cannot exceed the original or captured amount. Refunds are asynchronous: the request can be accepted and still fail later, for example when the customer’s account has been closed, so the final outcome arrives by notification rather than in the first response.
Why do refunds matter?
A fast, visible refund is the cheapest way to resolve a complaint, and a slow one turns into a chargeback with a fee and a mark on the merchant’s dispute ratio. As an illustrative example: an online store handles 400 returns a month. If refunds take three weeks and 5% of those customers dispute before the money arrives, 20 chargebacks a month follow, each with a fee and evidence to prepare, for payments the store had already agreed to return.
What can go wrong?
Refunds can fail, be delayed or arrive in a different amount than the customer expects. On a payment that was converted from another currency, Stripe’s documentation says the customer gets back exactly what they paid in their currency, while the amount taken from the merchant depends on the exchange rate at the time of the refund. Some local methods do not support refunds at all, so the store needs another way to return the money, such as a bank transfer. And provider fees on the original payment are often not returned.
Where does Omno use it?
Refunds through Omno are not available yet; they are on the roadmap. Omno’s routing-decision log already shows which provider took each payment, along with every attempt and provider response.