Refunds are transactions made when a certain charge is reversed and the amounts paid are returned to the buyer. This means that the customer will receive back the amount paid for the purchase of a certain product or service on their account or credit card statement.

Cancellations happen when a purchase is made but the payment has not yet been approved for some reason. In this case, considering that the transaction was not processed and the establishment did not receive any amount, the purchase is canceled and there is no charge.

Although they are similar transactions, it is important to keep in mind that the cancellation is made on the same day as the payment is captured, returning the limit to the buyer's card within the period defined by the issuing bank. The return referring to the reversal is made directly on the credit card bill, or on the checking account in cases of payment via Pix, boleto bancário or debit.

In this documentation, you will find the necessary information to perform a full and partial refund, and cancel a purchase in your store.

Before canceling a purchase, the following factors must be considered:

• Payment status: Cancellations can only be made if the payment status is Pending or In process. These statuses are displayed in the response of the Cancellation API call in the fields Status and Status detail respectively.

• Expiry date: A payment expires after 30 days without confirmation and the cancellation is automatic. The final status of this transaction will appear as Canceled or Expired. This information will be displayed in the response of the Cancellation API call, in the fields Status and Status detail respectively.

• Boleto bancário: If the expiry date of a boleto bancário expires, the user can generate it again by entering the transaction ID of their Mercado Pago account. However, if you want to avoid stock retention problems, for example, you can choose not to make a new issue of this slip available. To do this, simply cancel it.

Refunds can be made in two ways: full, when the total sale amount is returned to the buyer, or partial, when only part of the paid amount is returned to the buyer.

Before performing a refund, it is important to consider the factors below.

• Refund Deadline: it is possible to refund a payment within 180 days of its approval date.

• Account Balance: you must have sufficient balance available in your account to refund the amount, otherwise the transaction will not be concluded.

• Payment method: for payments by credit card, the amount will be refunded directly on the invoice. For other payment methods such as Pix, for example, the amount will be returned to the payer's account.

To make full or partial refunds of a payment and check the refunds made in your store, visit our API Reference and access the Create refund and Get refunds list APIs.