Refund a Credit Card

Owned by Daved (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Oct 31, 2024 by Jason Epp
2 min read

While a Credit Card payment can be refunded, once refunded you can NOT void the refund, or re-charge the customer with the previous card swipe.

The first video demonstrates a basic credit card refund transaction with voiceover. 



Partial Refund of Credit Card*

Using the PAX Aries 8 (similar for S300, D210, etc.), we can see a partial refund on FDMS.

Partial Refund support

It should be noted that not all processors allow a partial refund, or Refund unless the account is setup to use a Token.

  • For FDMS this would be a TransArmor Token, and is setup both on the Account side and PAX configuration. It will also include a 4-alphanumeric TokenType that is needed on PAX configuration from FDMS when setting up the Terminal ID.  

  • For Vantiv, the Vantiv Merchant account must be part of the Omnitoken group. There is no PAX configuration change, however if Omnitoken is not setup for the Vantiv merchant account than the PAX device will prompt for card to be re-swiped on a refund.  



Full Refund

A full refund on FDMS will look like this. 



Multiple Credit Card Refunds

If the check had multiple credit card payments, once the first payment is voided, Order Entry will default to the Cash Payment screen for the remaining balance of the check. In that case, just swipe left and void the Cash payment in the Order Items box, and it will prompt and allow for a payment to be be from the previous check payments.  In this example, we have already completed our check with 2 credit card payments, and have already refunded the first credit card payment and will continue to refund the 2nd payment transaction (this process could be used to refund a 3rd, 4th or more credit card payments):



Misc.

Some card processors or configurations, may not support partial refunds, or refunds of an existing check and may need to have the credit card to be present and re-swiped, or manually entered on refund. This is especially true, if attempting a refund for a previous day's transaction, because the original payment was batched and settled.  

In some cases the previous day's transaction will not allow a credit card refund at all and either a general refund will have to be paid to a credit card OR the card processor will need to be called in order to issue a refund. Other card processors or specific configurations may prompt for the card brand to be selected (e.g., Visa, MasterCard, Discover or American Express), before it will process the refund.