Why aren’t fees refunded when I refund a charge with WooPayments?

When you refund a customer, the fees paid on that transaction are not be refunded to your WooPayments account. This is for several reasons:

• When a charge is processed, we incur costs from the card networks (VISA and Mastercard) and from the payment partners we work with. Because these networks establish the rules and guidelines for refunded payments, very often they will keep the upfront cost of a refunded transaction. Therefore, these costs are not refunded to us when the charge is refunded.
• Our standard processing fees help provide WooPayments features and functionality, and allow us to continuously enhance your experience.
• WooPayments does not charge additional fees on top of the transaction fee to process a refund. (For example, we do not charge a $5 refund fee or similar.)

If you wish to avoid losses due to the unrefunded fees, you can instead provide customers with a partial refund equal to the total order amount minus the fees you paid originally.

If you do decide to do this, however, your store’s refund policy should clearly state this practice. If a customer lodges a dispute for the remaining fee, you will need to provide your refund policy as evidence to win that dispute.