What you need
You need a Stripe account with permission to issue refunds, and some detail about the payment you want to refund. Any one of these is enough to find it: the customer's email address, the amount, the last four digits of the card, or the payment ID. The examples here use made-up values: a customer named Jane Example, the address [email protected], an amount of $25.00 and the payment ID pi_EXAMPLE.
What you will have at the end
You will have found the right payment, checked it, and refunded all or part of it. The payment page will show the refund, and you will know what to tell the customer about when the money arrives.
Find the payment
A payment is one charge to a customer's card. Stripe lists every payment in one place, so you can search or filter until you reach the one you want.
- Sign in to the Stripe Dashboard.
- Look near the top of the Dashboard for the Test mode setting and check that it is off. Test mode shows practice data, and a refund made there does not touch real money. Stripe is moving some accounts to a feature called Sandboxes, so use whichever switch your Dashboard shows.
- Select Payments in the left menu. It may sit under a heading called Transactions.
- Type what you know into the search box, such as [email protected] or
pi_EXAMPLE. - If the search finds nothing, try a different detail, such as the amount or the last four digits of the card. The Dashboard may not search every field.
- If you only know roughly when it happened, clear the search and use the filters to set a date range and a status instead.
- Select the payment in the list to open its page.
Check the payment, then refund it
A refund cannot be undone once it is issued, so confirm you have the right payment before you go on.
- Read the amount, the status, the customer and the date at the top of the payment page. In the example, you should see $25.00, a status of Succeeded, the customer Jane Example, and the date she paid.
- If any detail is wrong, go back to the list and open a different payment.
- Select Refund payment, near the top right of the page.
- Choose to refund the full amount, or enter a smaller amount for a partial refund. For a partial refund of $10.00, type 10.00.
- Choose a reason from the list. The usual choices are Duplicate, Fraudulent and Requested by customer.
- Select Refund to confirm.
After the refund
The payment page now shows the payment as refunded, or as partially refunded if you returned only some of the money, and the refund appears in the payment's history on the same page. The customer usually sees the money on their statement after several business days. How long it takes depends on the card and the bank, so check Stripe's current documentation before you give a customer a date.
Once a refund is issued, you cannot cancel it, so do not refund twice to be safe. I don't know for certain whether Stripe returns its processing fee on a refund, so read Stripe's documentation on fees before you promise a customer or a colleague anything about them.
A very old payment may no longer be refundable. If the Refund payment button is missing, or the refund fails on an old payment, read Stripe's documentation on refund limits.
Common problems
If the payment is still pending, you cannot refund it yet, so wait until the status changes to Succeeded. If the payment was only authorized and never captured, cancel it instead of refunding it. If the Refund payment button is greyed out or missing, check the status first.
If the refund fails because the balance is too low, Stripe may refuse it until your account has enough available funds, and Stripe's documentation explains your options. If the payment already shows as fully refunded, there is nothing more to return.
If you cannot find the payment at all, look at the Test mode setting again. A payment made in live mode does not appear in test mode, and the other way round. Also check that you are signed in to the right Stripe account if you manage more than one.
Before you refund anyone, check your own business refund policy and who is allowed to issue refunds. This guide shows how the Dashboard works, and it is not legal or accounting advice. Dashboards change, so for now treat the menu names here as a guide to what to look for.