What is a credit card refund?
Sometimes you make transactions unnecessarily through your credit card or you later realise that you don’t need that particular thing or service, this happens often, so you request a refund or cancel the order. The amount deducted at the time of the transaction from your card will now be refunded to your credit card.
How to get a credit card refund
If you ordered something or taken services from someone you need to make sure about their refund policy and refund rules if you are ok from your side then you can request a refund directly from their portal of order online or you can call your service provider to initiate the refund from their side if you ordered something physically like from a store or somewhere you can ask at their customer reception centre to refund the amount.
How credit card refund works or credit card refund process.
You make transactions seamlessly through your credit card but you worry about how long it takes for a refund to appear on your credit card, this is a very easy process, three parties are involved in your credit card transaction, you, your card issue/bank and the merchant, once you make purchase your bank pay to your merchant on your behalf, similarly once you ask your merchant for refund they refund the same amount to you issuer or source your card.
How long it does take for a refund to appear on the credit card?
Generally credit card refund time frame is different from bank to bank or issuer to issuer, but as per the guidelines issued by regulatory authorities the maximum is 14 business days to settle your transaction and your balance would reflect in your account in the given time frame. nowadays for a better customer experience.
few merchants or stores process the refund at the same time and that will be reflected in your account in 24 to 48 hours, sometimes if there is an error from the bank side or merchant side then the customer will not be liable to get any amount deducted but as per the rules he/she can address the issue in consumer court.
Credit card chargeback vs credit card refund
People are often confused between chargeback and refund but these are two different terms used.
The major difference between a refund and a chargeback is the amount received by customer through the his/her card issuer company/bank directly, if the customer thinks this is the disputed transaction or extra charges levied by the bank on the customer then the bank returns the money to the customer directly and any other charges would be on merchants side.
On the other hand refund means the merchant issues the refund to the customer’s accounts for eg in case a customer returns or is dissatisfied with service customer requests for refund if the merchant thinks that this is under their policy then the merchant issues a refund and the bank processes the same to customer’s account.
How do refunds work in the case of credit card EMIs?
Sometimes you convert your Credit card amount into equated monthly instalments to lower your burden of paying in lump sum amounts or if your bank deposit is not enough to get that product in one go then the EMI Option is best to buy anything.
Credit Card EMI Refund follows the same process as the normal transaction followers but sometimes banks levy processing free on your transaction and that too is refundable if the order is cancelled or you asked for a refund before your amount converts into EMI, Generally banks give few days for Eg. 5 to 7 business days to convert your amount into EMIs, few banks don’t even charge you the processing fee at any point of time your full money get refunded into you credit card balance, as your credit card limit increases.
Does a credit card refund impact your credit score?
No, it won’t affect your credit score but for the time being your credit spend limit may be affected, once you receive your refund you can use your credit card again with the full amount.
Credit card dispute
You can raise a dispute directly to the merchant in case of a refund, as you can ask the merchant to get your money refunded in your account, but in case of chargeback, you can directly raise a dispute to your issuer bank or the issuer company, if you think the transaction was fraudulent you can call your card issuer or bank directly to raise a dispute.
What is a Credit card negative balance refund?
If you made the transaction of the full amount and your credit card balance is negative, once your merchant or bank processes the refund, it will reflect in your credit card and your card balance become zero as the refund will compensate for the negative balance.
What if you close your credit card before a refund?
If you close your credit card before taking the refund, there are two conditions either you lost your credit card or you made the full payment of your credit card and then closed, in the first case it will reflect in your banking app and can be used for online transaction and on the other hand if you closed your credit card by paying all the amount or returned money to credit card, the refund amount will be credited in attached bank account from where you pay bills or linked bank account.
Credit card refund rights and policies
If you purchased from a merchant or somewhere kindly go through their policies and rule books once, it will help you to get back your pending amount, every country has rules and regulations which every bank and lending company have to follow strictly.
credit card refund protection is for both the consumer/customer or the bank and merchant as well. India has better rules than other countries in this matter as people have to follow strict guidelines as compared to other countries also UPI Makes payments and refunds easy, recently Rupay card introduced Credit card UPI payment which helped a lot of people pay directly through credit card via UPI.
Also, read about how to increase your credit card limit
