Is there a way to return only the developer app fee on an order back to the merchant? Example would be that we collect 3rd party delivery fee and tip to pass on the 3rd party. There is an issue with the delivery and the merchant decides to self deliver. In that case, the 3rd party no longer gets the tip and fee, the merchant should keep it. But since we’ve already collected it, we need to give it back.
Any way to address this and provide it back to the merchant?
By default, Square refunds application fees proportionately. A full refund returns the entire app fee, and a partial refund returns a proportional share (e.g., a 75% refund returns 75% of the fee). Square’s processing fees are not returned.
When refunding via the Refunds API, you can override this with app_fee_money: set a specific amount to refund exactly that from your developer account, or set it to 0 to refund none of the fee. (Seller-initiated refunds through Square are always proportional.)
If the original payment used app_fee_allocations, the refund must also use app_fee_allocations with the same set of locations.
Full details and examples: Refund a Payment with an Application Fee
Hi @ashley-square thanks for your response but your response does not answer my question. I am not looking to provide a refund to the customer, which would then apply a portion from the app fee. I am looking to understand if ONLY an app fee that was extracted from an order can be returned to the merchant, without any refund being processed to the end customer.
Ah, thanks for clarifying, and apologies for the confusion!
No, there isn’t a way to do this through Square’s APIs. Application fee refunds can only occur as part of a refund on the original payment, so returning the fee always requires refunding the buyer. There’s no API to transfer funds from your developer account back to a seller account on its own.
I understand this would be a useful feature, so I’ll flag it as a feature request with the team.