Alipay, China's leading third-party online payment solutionAlipay, China's leading third-party online payment solution

Refund

Discover Antom's refund rules and learn how to initiate a refund for a successful transaction.

Refund rules

The following are the relevant refund rules:

  • Commission fee: Whether the commission fee is returned or whether there are additional charges for the refund is subject to the contract.
  • Refund settlement rate: When the settlement and payment currency are inconsistent, the settlement exchange rate used for refund is the Antom exchange rate on the day of the successful refund.
  • Refund restriction: Different payment methods have different restrictions. The following are specific situations:
    • Refund not supported
    • Partial refund not supported
    • Refunds are not supported after a certain time, starting from the time of successful payment.

For details, see Refund capabilities of payment methods.

  • Refund return: In extreme cases, due to the abnormal status of the user's bank account and other reasons, the refund API is called and returns a successful refund status, but the user is unable to receive the funds successfully. Antom will settle the corresponding funds and notify you through the financial report settlement. You need to decide how to handle the funds.

Refund methods

After the transaction is paid successfully, you can initiate a refund through the following two ways:

Workflow

The following figure is the workflow of refund.

支付后-退款.png

Figure 1. Workflow of refund

Notes:

  • After calling the refund API, the following three situations may be returned:
    • A refund failure is returned in the refund response: If the request parameters are incorrect, try to adjust the refund parameters based on the returned error code information and retry. Contact Antom Technical Support for troubleshooting. For details about how to handle each error code, see Error codes.
    • A successful refund is returned in the refund response: The resultCode parameter returns REFUND_IN_PROCESS, use the inquiryRefund API to obtain the final refund result, or wait for the refund result notification through notifyRefund.
    • An unknown exception of refund is returned in the refund response: It is usually due to network reasons, and you can try to retry without changing the account.
  • Refund notification: A refund notification will be sent if the refund is successful. In the case of refund failure, there will be no refund notification if the processing is abnormal due to an illegal refund request.

Integration steps

Start your integration by taking the following steps:

  1. Initiate a refund request
  2. Receive a refund response

Step 1: Initiate a refund request

The refund process through the refund API varies depending on the payment method and may proceed either synchronously or asynchronously:

  • Synchronous refundAfter calling the refund API, the response directly indicates whether the refund was successful or failed. Nevertheless, there is a slight possibility of system exceptions or payment channel processing exceptions, which might result in different responses.
  • Asynchronous refund: After calling the refund API, a response indicates the refund is being processed. You are then required to periodically check the refund status or wait for a notification that will provide the final refund status.

The following table shows payment methods supported by the synchronous and asynchronous refunds.

Synchronous refund

Asynchronous refund

Alipay+ payment methods

All other payment methods default to asynchronous refunds.

For a comprehensive list of payment methods, refer to Payment methods.

Mastercard and Visa cards through acquirers 2C2P HK and 2C2P SG

Table 1. Payment methods supported by synchronous and asynchronous refund

The following table shows API compatibility with synchronous and asynchronous refund processes.

API

Synchronous refund

Asynchronous refund

refund

Supported

Supported

notifyRefund

Not supported

Supported

inquiryRefund

Supported

Supported

Table 2. API capabilities supported by synchronous and asynchronous refund

The following requirements for a refund request must be satisfied when you use the refund API. Failure to meet these criteria will result in Antom issuing the respective error codes:

Error code

 Description

ORDER_STATUS_INVALID

The payment is not successful.

REFUND_WINDOW_EXCEED

The refund date exceeds the refundable period that is agreed in the contract.

PAYMENT_METHOD_NOT_SUPPORTED

The payment method does not support canceling or refunding transactions

PARTIAL_REFUND_NOT_SUPPORTED

A partial refund is not supported for this transaction.

MERCHANT_BALANCE_NOT_ENOUGH

The merchant balance is insufficient.

Table 3. Error codes

When initiating a refund through the refund API, the key parameters in the request are listed as follows:

Parameter

Is required?

 Description

refundRequestId

Yes

The unique identifier that you assign to a payment.

paymentId

Yes

The unique identifier that Antom assigns to the original payment to be refunded.

refundAmount

Yes

The refund amount must be no less than the minimum refund amount (usually the same as the minimum payment amount) and no greater than the refundable amount of a payment.

The currency of the refund amount must be consistent with the currency of the payment amount in the pay API.

refundNotifyUrl

No

The URL for receiving asynchronous refund notifications.

Table 4. Key parameters of refund requests

Step 2: Receive a refund response

After you call the refund API, Antom synchronously returns the refund result. The resultStatus parameter in the API response indicates the refund status of this payment. The values of resultStatus are explained as follows:

  • S: The refund is successful.
  • F: The refund failed. When the error codes mentioned in Step 1 are excluded, returning F in the response may be an illegal parameter in the request. See the Error codes of the refund API or contact Antom Technical Support for troubleshooting.
  • U: The following scenarios may occur:
    • REFUND_IN_PROCESS: Indicates that the refund is being processed. You can call the inquiryRefund API to obtain the refund result or wait for the refund result notification.
    • UNKNOWN_EXCEPTION/ REQUEST_TRAFFIC_EXCEED_LIMIT: Usually caused by Antom system or network issues, you can call the refund API to retry.
  • ORDER_IS_CLOSED: Usually returned in the inquiryRefund response, refund recall, and notifyRefund request. It may be that the refund cannot be processed in Antom for some reason. You can change your account and retry.