Refund a payment without a reference

Last updated: June 11, 2025

You can issue a refund through Checkout.com even if the original payment wasn't authorized or captured by us.

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If you processed the original payment with us, we recommend you process the refund with the payment ID instead.

For example, you can use unreferenced refunds if:

You authorize payments through multiple payment service providers (PSPs), but want to manage refunds through us.
You do not have a payment_id available to send in the refund request, which prevents us from linking it to the original authorization.

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To enable unreferenced refunds, contact your account manager or request support.

To be eligible for an unreferenced refund, the original payment must have been performed:

In the United States (US) using a credit or debit card – Prepaid cards are not supported
By a card issued in the US by one of the following schemes:
- American Express
- Discover
- Mastercard
- Visa

To issue an unreferenced refund, call the Request a payment endpoint and:

Set payment_type to UnreferencedRefund.
Provide the account from which to debit the funds in the source field.
Provide the account to credit with the refund in the destination field – You can provide the full card details or a payment instrument ID.

To avoid sanctions requests, ensure you provide as much information as possible about the source and destination of the funds. For more information, see Reduce sanctions request volumes.

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The Unified Payments API supports idempotency. You can safely retry API requests without the risk of duplicate requests.

To issue a refund to an account holder using their full card details:

Set destination.type to card.
Provide the card number in the destination.number field.


1{
2  "amount": 1000,
3  "currency": "USD",
4  "payment_type": "UnreferencedRefund",
5  "processing_channel_id": "pc_xxx",
6  "reference": "REF-FQSGRB",
7  "source": {
8      "type": "currency_account",
9      "id": "ca_xxx"
10  },
11  "destination": {
12      "type": "card",
13      "number": "4111111111111111",
14      "expiry_month": 12,
15      "expiry_year": 2042,
16      "account_holder": {
17          "type": "individual", 
18          "first_name": "John",
19          "last_name": "Doe",
20          "date_of_birth": "2000-01-01",
21          "country_of_birth": "US",
22          "billing_address": {
23              "address_line1": "123 Test St",
24              "city": "New York",
25              "state": "NY",
26              "zip": "10014",
27              "country": "US"
28          }
29      }
30  }
31}

If you receive a 202 Success response containing, your request was successful.


1{
2 "id": "pay_g4blr3juzouutaijarea5hejd4",
3 "status": "Pending",
4 "reference": "REF-FQSGRB",
5 "instruction": {
6     "value_date": "2025-04-15T22:00:07.7270019Z"
7 },
8 "_links": {
9     "self": {
10         "href": "https://api.sandbox.checkout.com/payments/pay_g4blr3juzouutaijarea5hejd4"
11     },
12     "actions": {
13         "href": "https://api.sandbox.checkout.com/payments/pay_g4blr3juzouutaijarea5hejd4/actions"
14     }
15 }
16}

If you've stored the account holder's payment details as a payment instrument, you can issue a refund using the source ID:

Set destination.type to id.
Provide the payment instrument ID in the destination.id field.


1{
2  "amount": 1000,
3  "currency": "USD",
4  "payment_type": "UnreferencedRefund",
5  "processing_channel_id": "pc_xxx",
6  "reference": "REF-GKCQLQ",
7  "source": {
8      "type": "currency_account",
9      "id": "ca_xxx"
10  },
11  "destination": {
12      "type": "id",
13      "id": "src_xxx",
14      "account_holder": {
15          "type": "individual", 
16          "first_name": "John",
17          "last_name": "Doe",
18          "date_of_birth": "2000-01-01",
19          "country_of_birth": "US"
20      }
21  }
22}


1{
2 "id": "pay_j6wxwvn6icjelfw24k6xzyfmea",
3 "status": "Pending",
4 "reference": "REF-GKCQLQ",
5 "instruction": {
6     "value_date": "2025-04-15T22:04:41.1840138Z"
7 },
8 "_links": {
9     "self": {
10         "href": "https://api.sandbox.checkout.com/payments/pay_j6wxwvn6icjelfw24k6xzyfmea"
11     },
12     "actions": {
13         "href": "https://api.sandbox.checkout.com/payments/pay_j6wxwvn6icjelfw24k6xzyfmea/actions"
14     }
15 }
16}

When you request an unreferenced refund, we perform additional transaction monitoring and risk checks to confirm that the recipient of the refund is the account holder.

If the refund is successful, you receive a payment_refunded webhook.

You can subscribe to other refund webhooks to monitor the status of the refund.

Note

Receiving a response from the API is not a confirmation that the refund was successful.

Refund a payment without a reference

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Eligible payments

Request an unreferenced refund

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Request example

Response example

Request example

Response example

Confirm the refund

Note