Refund overview
Process full or itemised refunds for payments directly from the Square Point of Sale app or your online Square Dashboard.
Payments refunded via your Square app or online Square Dashboard can be refunded within one year of the original transaction date. Refunds processed through Square Online—including Afterpay online transactions—must be requested and completed within one year of the original transaction.
When you issue a refund, your customer is refunded the requested amount.
Watch the video below to learn more about processing videos via the Square POS app:
| Refund Details | Payments |
|---|---|
| Full Refund | Yes |
| Partial Refund | Yes |
| Itemised Refund | Yes |
| Processed more than one year ago via Dashboard | No |
| Processed more than 1 year ago via mobile device | No |
Learn more about processing refunds from the Square app or your online Square Dashboard.
How Refunds Work
Refund Process
Full Refunds: Once a refund is initiated, Square will debit the amount of the transaction, and will credit the full refund amount back to your customer’s card.
Partial Refunds: The same process applies to partial refunds. The amount you are debited will be proportional to the partial refund amount requested.
You will receive email notifications once a refund is requested as well as when a refund completes.
Using Square's Team Management? A team member’s ability to process refunds is determined by their role and permissions.
Where will the funds or refund come from?
How you are charged for refunds depends on your transfer schedule.
If you receive automatic transfers, your Square account balance will be used to cover the amount of the refund and your bank account will be debited for any remaining amount needed. For example, if you have $20 in your Square account balance, Square would take the $20 from your Square account balance and then debit your bank account for the remaining $5 to repay your customer. This activity will be reflected in your Transfer Reports on the business day you processed the refund.
If you have a manual transfer schedule, Square may debit funds from your bank account even if you have a sufficient Square account balance to cover the refund amounts. This will happen when a refund is requested for a payment taken on a prior day. For example, if you have $20 in your Square account balance, but the refund was requested a few days after the original payment was taken, Square will debit your bank account for $25 to repay your customer.
Funds removed from your balance to cover refunds will be reflected as an “Adjustment” line item in Activity > All within the Balance section of your online Square Dashboard. If a debit to your bank account is made, it will appear in Activity > Transfers.
Refund Timeline
It takes 2-7 business days to process a refund with Square. Once the refund is processed and sent to your customer’s card issuing bank, it can take another 2-7 business days (depending on the bank’s processing speeds) for the refund to post to your customer’s account. In total, it can take up to 4–14 business days for your customer to receive their refund.
Refunds processed through Square Online—including Afterpay online transactions—must be requested and completed within one year of the original transaction.
Note: Refund requests that aren’t covered by your Square balance may not be approved, even if requested within the appropriate timeframe.
Refund Policy
Customise your refund and return policy from the Receipt settings in your online Square Dashboard. Your policy appears on email, text, and printed receipts. If a return policy is absent, it’s assumed there’s no policy. Be sure to clearly state if you don’t offer refunds or warranties.
Note: All major card companies allow cardholders to chargeback purchases if a customer can demonstrate that they didn’t receive the purchased product or service. Learn how to protect yourself against chargebacks.
Refund Afterpay Transactions
If the customer completed a payment using Afterpay Card and Square hardware, you can issue a full or partial refund within one year of the original transaction date. Learn more about how refunds and returns work at Afterpay via their website.
If you’ve returned an order in its entirety and the full amount of the order is refunded, any upcoming payments will be cancelled and any payments you’ve already made will be refunded back to the card you paid with.
The same principles apply if you’ve returned a portion of an order and received a partial refund. Let’s use the below example to show how this works.
Order #123456 totalled $100, and the first payment of $25 was made at the time of purchase.
| Order #123456 | $100 | Payment Status |
|---|---|---|
| First payment | $25 | PAID |
| Second payment | $25 | Due in two weeks |
| Third payment | $25 | Due in four weeks |
| Fourth payment | $25 | Due in six weeks |
The order total was $100 and a refund of $80 was processed.
However, prior to the second payment being made, items totalling $80 were returned. After the $80 refund was processed, the second, third and fourth payments were cancelled. Additionally, the first payment was retroactively adjusted to $20 and the $5 balance was refunded back to the original card the payment was made with.
| Order #123456 | $100 | Payment Status |
|---|---|---|
| First payment | $25 | Adjusted to $20, refund $5 back to card |
| Second payment | $25 | Cancelled |
| Third payment | $25 | Cancelled |
| Fourth payment | $25 | Cancelled |
Refund Reporting
Reporting details for your refunds can be found in both the Transactions and Balance sections of your Square Dashboard or Square Point of Sale app.
To help reconcile refunds with the transfers sent to your bank account, check your transfer reports by selecting Money > Balance > Transfer Reports from your online Square Dashboard.
When you issue a refund, the deduction of the refund from the overall amount transferred to your bank account is reflected under the line Returns.
You can find the information for individual payments and refunds under Transactions in either your online Square Dashboard or the Square app.
When you process a refund, it will appear as an additional, separate transaction in your reporting. If you select either the original payment transaction or the refund transaction, you will be able to view both the refund and payment information.
Find answers to commonly asked questions about refunds via our Refunds FAQ.