Voids vs Refunds
When you need to return funds back to a customer, there are two ways to do it and the one you'll have available is dependent on where the payment is at in the transaction lifecycle:
❌ A void cancels the transfer of funds from your customer before the transaction settles.
💸 A refund is the movement of funds back to your customer after it reaches your bank account.
🎙️ Let's talk about voids
A “void” is an action that will seek to remove the hold or confirmation of funds on a given payment before the payment is captured, or put more simply, before funds actually move from the payer to the payee.
When a payment is voided, the status is changed to “CANCELLED” and the payee’s account provider (typically their bank) will be sent a request to release the hold/authorisation of funds, which should be made available immediately to their respective customers.
💳 Supported Payment Methods
Not all payment methods support this action as not all payment flows include a separated step between the authorisation of the payment and the subsequent capture. The supported payment methods are:
- Pay by Card
- Apple Pay
- PayPal - Coming soon!
- Clearpay - Coming soon!
The methods that do not support voids are:
- Pay by Bank
Pay by Bank involves an immediate transfer of funds from the customer’s bank to your Rvvup account, rather than the two-step payment flows of older payment methods like credit cards.
ℹ️ How to issue a void in WooCommerce
⚠️ The Void functionality is supported in the WooCommerce plugin version 1.20231109154338.main.685d70a & up!
- Go to: WooCommerce > Orders.
- Select the order to void.
- If the payment was made with a support payment method and has not yet settled, you will see a Void button.
- When clicked, you will be prompted to confirm with an alert message on your browser.
- After confirming this message, the plugin will send a Void request against the order’s payment. If successful, the order’s status will be updated to “Cancelled” and the customer should see a release on their funds immediately (depending on their account provider).
-
The order will also be updated with a note in WooCommerce reflecting this action:
ℹ️ How to issue a void in Magento
⚠️ The Void functionality is supported in Magento plugin version 14.0 & up!
- Log in to your Magento 2 admin panel.
- Click on Sales in the main menu, then select Orders.
- Find the order for which you want to issue a refund and click on it to open it.
- If the the payment was made with a support payment method and has not yet settled, you will see Void button in the order banner list.
- When clicked, you will be prompted to confirm with an alert message on your browser.
- After confirming this message, the plugin will send a Void request against the order’s payment. If successful, the order’s status will be updated to “Cancelled” and the customer should see a release on their funds immediately (depending on their account provider).
- See Magento’s Void Documentation for more details.
🏁 That's it! Looking for information about refunds? Checkout out the Refunds article.