From 1 October 2023 the bank will no longer refund their original deduction costs (credit card commissions) when you reverse funds to the guest's credit card.
Credit Card Reversal Options.
We are changing PayBridge Card Reversals to allow the following options:
- Repay the full amount the guest paid (means you will fund the bank costs).
- Repay total minus bank costs (guests should know about this beforehand)
- Pay a partial amount (e.g. according to the cancellation period)
The full amount / amount minus card costs will be automatically calculated and processed,
Example:
For a R1,000 booking.
If you had already received the money that needs to be reversed to the guest's card -- and you want to return 100% of the amount to your guest, you will need to pay R1,000 to PayBridge in order to have the funds available to return R1,000 back to the guest.
At the moment, (e.g. for a card deducted at 2.5%) you pay back R975 while the bank credits you the R25 card commission previously deducted.
Please note that this discussion is about bank commission (costs). It does not relate to channel commission. If the channel commission had already been deducted before you got paid, of course you don't need to refund that.
Update your Terms and Conditions
If you choose not to return the bank costs, you will need to notify your guests that this is a possiblity, before they book, as one of your Terms and Conditions. You might add, for example, a sentence like:
"We reserve the right to not refund bank costs upon cancellation for credit card bookings, as the bank does not credit initial deduction costs."
Please bear in mind that our "PayBridge" service is the same as a card machine. We are just a facility to help you process and manage payments, not an agent. For this reason, we cannot assist with refunding or carrying costs of this nature.