For businesses on IC+ pricing, depending on your fee schedule with Stripe, there may be some fees for issuing refunds. For all other businesses, there may be fees when bank transfers are used. For all other payment methods, there are no fees for issuing refunds. The payment processing, Connect, and currency conversion fees from the original charge are not returned.
A large portion of the underlying cost of payment processing is driven by fees assessed by banks and payment networks (like Visa and Mastercard). These networks set rules about which fees apply for refunded payments, and in many cases banks and card networks keep the entire upfront cost of a refunded transaction. For some regions and payment types, refunded payments also incur additional fees.
We aim to make our pricing simple and transparent, and our standard fees include access to a variety of features like fraud protection, reporting, and other tools for managing your payments. To address these underlying payment processing costs and continue providing these services as part of our standard pricing, Stripe does not return our fees when a payment is refunded.