How do refunds work?


When processing transactions it is likely that refunds will arise from time-to-time in your payment workflow. Depending on the way your platform is setup there are a few options you have with Zai in how you can manage refunds, including:

  1. Refund from the payout user's bank account. Initiate a refund for funds which have been sent to the outbound user's bank account. The Item state will be completed, and you want funds to come back from their bank account. A refund done this way will pull funds back from your outbound user's bank account and then return them to the purchaser (this will take a number of days to succeed as the funds need to be debited from their bank account first, usual bank processing times apply).
  2. Refund from the payout user's wallet first, then their bank account. Initiate a refund for funds which have been sent to the outbound user's bank account. The Item state will be completed, and you want funds to come back from the user's wallet first, and then from their bank account if there's not enough funds in the digital wallet. A refund done this way will try the wallet first, then pull funds back from your outbound user's wallet and then return them to the purchaser. This type of refund can lead to queries from your users on how to reconcile payments from your platform.
When deciding how you want refunds to work, it's best to consider how you want your users to see funds in their bank account, or how you're managing reporting of this in your platform.

To discuss refunds further, contact our support team and we'll help you get things sorted.