Refunds
A refund returns money from a completed payment to your customer. You can issue a full or partial refund until the payment method's refund deadline passes. This page explains where to issue a refund, how long you have, how long it takes, how it affects your fees, why refunds can't be canceled, and what happens when the original card is no longer valid.
Where to issue a refund
Where you issue a refund depends on how you take payments:
- Through an e-commerce platform (Shopify, Wix, WooCommerce, and similar) — open the order in your store admin and issue a full or partial refund there.
- Directly with MONEI (for example through the API, Pay by Link, or MONEI Pay) — open the payment in your MONEI dashboard and issue the refund.
If you sell through Shopify, Wix, or WooCommerce, always issue refunds from the platform — not the MONEI dashboard. A dashboard refund still reaches your customer, but it is not synced back to your store, so the order's refund status there stays out of date.
How long you have to refund
A refund is not open-ended. Each payment method sets its own deadline, counted from the original transaction date, and after it passes the payment can no longer be refunded.
| Payment method | Refund deadline |
|---|---|
| Card | 180 days |
| Bizum | 180 days |
| PayPal | 180 days |
| MB WAY | 13 months |
| Multibanco | 13 months |
For any other method, check its own page. If you have to return money after the deadline, pay the customer outside MONEI.
How long a refund takes
Refunds take 5-10 days to appear on your customer's statement, depending on their bank.
How refunds affect your fees
Every payment has two fees:
- The acquiring fee: the payment processor charges it to process the payment.
- The MONEI fee: our own fee. It has two parts: a percentage of the amount, plus a fixed amount per payment.
A refund gives the money back to your customer, but you don't get the acquiring fee back. You pay the acquiring fee on the original payment even when you refund all of it.
The MONEI fee works differently:
- You refund part of the payment. You pay the percentage only on the amount you keep. You still pay the fixed amount, because the payment took place.
- You refund the full payment. You pay no MONEI fee at all.
For example, a customer pays €100:
- You refund €30. You pay the percentage on the €70 you keep, plus the fixed amount. You don't get back the acquiring fee on the €100 payment.
- You refund all €100. You pay no MONEI fee. You still don't get back the acquiring fee on the €100 payment.
For the percentage and the fixed amount of each payment method, see Pricing.
Bancontact, Multibanco and MB WAY also charge a small fixed fee for each refund. For the amounts by payment method, see Pricing.
Refund in several parts
You can refund a payment in several partial refunds, until their total reaches the payment amount. If you don't give an amount through the API, MONEI refunds what is left. Issue one refund at a time: while a refund on the payment is still in progress, a new one is rejected.
Why a refund can fail
MONEI rejects a refund when:
- the payment method's refund deadline has passed;
- the amount is more than what is left to refund on the payment;
- another refund on the same payment is still in progress.
A refund can also fail after you issue it, for reasons on the customer's side. For example, a Bizum refund fails when the customer has disconnected Bizum or linked their phone number to a different account. If the original card no longer exists, see Refund to a different card.
Cancel a refund
You can't cancel a refund. To reverse one, charge your customer again — this creates a new payment.
Refund to a different card
A refund always goes back to the original card. If that card has expired or been canceled, the customer's bank normally routes the refund to their new card — or credits their bank account if they don't have one.
If the bank can't do either, it sends the refund back to us, and we'll email you to agree on how to handle it.
Common questions
Can I refund more than the customer paid?
No. A refund can never exceed the original payment amount, and the total of several partial refunds can't exceed it either. To send a customer money beyond what they paid, you need payouts, a separate gated feature.
Can I refund a payment to a different card or bank account?
No. You choose the amount, not the destination. A refund always returns to the payment method that was charged. See Refund to a different card for what happens when that card no longer exists.