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Credits

Credits are payment refunds from a merchant to the cardholder after a cardholder pays for a product or service and that payment is captured by the merchant. When a credit request is successful, the issuer transfers funds from the merchant bank (acquirer) account to the customer's account. It typically takes 2 to 4 days for the acquirer to transfer funds from your merchant account.

WARNING

You should carefully control access to the credit service. Do not request this service directly from your customer interface. Instead, incorporate this service as part of your customer service process. This process reduces the potential for fraudulent transactions.

There are two basic types of credits:

refunds

and stand-alone credits.

Refunds

Refunds, also known as follow-on credits

, use the capture request ID to link the refund to a specific transaction. This request ID is returned during the capture request (also known as a settlement
) and is used in all subsequent refunds associated with the original capture. The request ID links the transaction to the customer’s billing and account information, so you are not required to include those fields in the credit request. However, when you combine a request for a refund with a request for another service, such as the tax calculation service, you must provide the customer’s billing and account information.

Unless otherwise specified, refunds must be requested within 180 days of a settlement. You can request multiple refunds against a single capture. To perform multiple refunds, use the same request ID in each request.

Stand-Alone Credits

Stand-alone credits are not tied to an original transaction. Stand-alone credits do not have a time restriction, and they can be used to issue refunds more than 180 days after a transaction settlement.

Credit Workflow

The credit workflow begins when you send a request for a credit.

A credit does not happen in real time. All of the credit requests for a day are typically placed in a file and sent to the processor as a single batch
transaction. In most cases, the batch transaction is settled overnight.

The merchant sends a request for a credit to Cybersource.

For online credits, Cybersource validates the order information then sends an online credit to the payment processor.

For offline credits, Cybersource stores the credit request in a batch file and sends the batch file to the payment processor after midnight.

The processor validates the request and forwards it to the acquiring bank.

The acquiring bank transfers funds to the issuing bank.