Refunds FAQ

Payments processed through Square or Afterpay in-person can be refunded within one year of the original transaction date. Once this window has passed, you must issue refunds outside of Square.

Payments processed via Square Online are only eligible to refund within 120 days of the original payment date.

Refunds can take between 9 to 14 business days to complete. We are unable to expedite the refund timeline.

Yes! Learn how to process a partial or itemised refund.

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.

Once you process a refund, you cannot cancel it.

No. When you refund, your customer is refunded their full payment amount and you’re refunded any processing fees.

There isn’t a limit, but we don’t allow refunding as a way to accept security deposits or pre-authorisation charges, for example: rental bonds.

Customers will not receive a notification regarding their card, cash, cheque or other tender refund unless you issue a proof of the refund. You can issue a refunded payment receipt from the Transactions tab of your online Square Dashboard or Square POS app. This receipt will contain refund details including the refund amount, refund reason, and date and time of refund.

Customers can also check their card statement to see if the refund has processed. Refunds from Square will show on a statement as SQ*, followed by the Square seller’s name or business name, and business type.

You will not receive email notifications for Cash or Other Tender refunds, as these complete automatically. For card refunds, you will receive an email notification once a refund is requested as well as when the refund completes.

Not at this time. The refund must be processed to the original payment card.

A few things can happen:

• If a new card was activated with the same card issuer, the refund is usually credited to the new payment card.
• If the account was closed recently (last two months), the refund may post and the card-issuer usually contacts the buyer directly to notify them of any next steps.
• If the account has been closed for some time, the credit will fail. In this case, we’ll notify you, the Square seller, of the failure and you’ll need to refund the customer outside of Square via another method.

Next Steps: Have your customer reach out to their card issuing bank to locate the refund. If they’re unable to find their refund credit after talking with their bank, contact Square Support.