Refund Policy

Cardholders must receive the full refund amount

Mastercard scheme rules prohibit merchants and payment facilitators from deducting any processing fee from a refund before it reaches the cardholder. The cardholder must receive exactly the amount that was agreed to be refunded.

Absterco Pay complies with this requirement. Any refund processing costs are charged separately against the organisation's account — they are never subtracted from the cardholder's credit.

Organisations that attempt to instruct a partial refund for the purpose of recovering processing costs (rather than a genuine partial refund for partial goods/services) may have their integration suspended.

Refund processing fee — billed to the organisation

Because the gateway fee Seylan Bank charges on the original transaction is non-refundable, Absterco charges a 5% refund processing fee. This fee is applied against the organisation's account balance or included in the next settlement statement.

The cardholder's refund credit is not reduced. The fee is an entirely separate B2B charge between Absterco and the organisation.

120-day refund window

Linked refunds (issued against the original order ID) can only be submitted within 120 days of the original transaction date. This limit is set by Mastercard scheme rules and enforced by Seylan Bank.

Refund requests submitted after 120 days will be rejected by the gateway. If a customer disputes a charge after this window, the bank will handle it as a chargeback — a separate process that Absterco does not control and which may result in additional fees for the organisation.

Organisations should build their own refund request windows to be shorter than 120 days (e.g. 90 days) to allow adequate processing time.

Maximum refundable amount

You cannot refund more than the total captured amount for an order. Partial refunds are permitted — multiple refund calls against the same order are allowed as long as the cumulative total does not exceed the original captured amount.

Excessive refunds (returning more than was originally charged) are not enabled by default. Contact support if your business model requires them.