Refunds FAQs

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

Learn more about processing refunds with Square.

It can take up to 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.

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

Once you process a refund, you cannot cancel it.

When you refund a payment, your customer is refunded for their full payment amount, but the processing fees for the payment are not refunded.

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 refund unless the refund is manually re-sent.

If the original sale was made with the Cash, Cheque or Other Tender options, the customer won’t receive a notification. If they need proof of the refund, they can contact you directly to send a refunded payment receipt.

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, cheque 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.

You and the customer will automatically be notified about the decline. In this case, you will be instructed to issue an alternative form of payment to the buyer to complete the refund, such as cash, cheque or gift card credit.

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 credit after talking with their bank, contact Square Support.