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Reversal

Return the funds to the shopper when you are not sure whether the payment has been captured.

Use the /payments/{paymentPspReference}/reversals endpoint if you want to return the funds to your shopper, but are not certain whether the payment has been captured or not.

This will either: 

  • Cancel the payment – in case it has not yet been captured. 
  • Refund the payment – in case it has already been captured.

You get the outcome of the reversal request asynchronously, in a CANCEL_OR_REFUND webhook.

Do not use the /payments/{paymentPspReference}/reversals endpoint for payments that involve

Instead, check if the payment has been captured. If not captured yet, make a /payments/{paymentPspReference}/cancels call. If already captured, make a /payments/{paymentPspReference}/refunds call.

Reverse a payment

Make a POST  /payments/{paymentPspReference}/reversals request, where paymentPspReference is the pspReference of the payment that you want to reverse. You can find the pspReference in the AUTHORISATION webhook.

In your request, include:

  • merchantAccount: The name of your merchant account that is used to process the payment.
  • reference: You can optionally include a reference reversal request. The reference field is useful to tag a partial cancel or refund for reconciliation.

The /payments/{paymentPspReference}/reversals  response includes a pspReference, Adyen's unique reference associated with this reversal request.

{
    "merchantAccount": "YOUR_MERCHANT_ACCOUNT",
    "paymentPspReference": "VK9DRSLLRCQ2WN82",
    "pspReference" : "TF995R5G6L2GWR82",
    "reference": "YOUR_UNIQUE_REFERENCE",
    "status" : "received"
}

CANCEL_OR_REFUND webhook

You receive the outcome of the reversal request asynchronously, in a webhook that includes :

  • eventCode: CANCEL_OR_REFUND.
  • originalReference: the PSP reference of the original payment.
  • pspReference: the pspReference from the reversal response.

  • success: indicates the outcome of the refund validations. Possible values:

    • true: Adyen's validations were successful and we sent the refund request to the card scheme. This usually means that the refund will be processed successfully. However, in rare cases the refund can be rejected by the card scheme, or reversed. For information about these exceptions, see REFUND_FAILED webhook, and REFUNDED_REVERSED webhook.

    • false: the refund validations failed. The webhook includes a reason field with a short description of the problem. Review the reason, fix the issue if possible, and resubmit the refund request.

{
   "live":"false",
   "notificationItems":[
      {
         "NotificationRequestItem":{
            "additionalData":{
               "modification.action": "refund"
            },
            "amount":{
               "currency": "EUR",
               "value": 1025
            },
            "eventCode":"CANCEL_OR_REFUND",
            "eventDate":"2022-02-03T15:14:15.004Z",
            "merchantAccountCode":"YOUR_MERCHANT_ACCOUNT",
            "originalReference":"VK9DRSLLRCQ2WN82",
            "paymentMethod":"mc",
            "pspReference":"TF995R5G6L2GWR82",
            "reason":"",
            "success":"true"
         }
      }
   ]
}

For more information about the included fields, see the CANCEL_OR_REFUND webhook reference.

See also