Sometimes an approved refund doesn't reach the customer. A bank transfer bounces, an email address has a typo, or a payment account has been closed. When that happens the refund lands in a Failed status.
Rather than leaving it stuck, you can send the customer a follow-up asking them to supply fresh details — and the refund picks up where it left off.
Finding failed refunds
Filter your refund list by the Failed status. Expand any failed request and you'll see a Failed payout follow up card on the Details tab.
The card also stays visible on requests where you've already sent a follow-up, so you can check on progress.
Sending a follow-up
The card shows whether a follow-up has been sent yet, and when.
Review the Message to customer field. It's pre-filled from your failed follow-up message template, in the customer's own language.
Edit the message if you'd like to add context specific to this situation.
Click Send now.
Confirm.
Once sent, the button changes to Send again, so you can chase a second time if you don't hear back.
The :url token is required
Your message must include :url. This is replaced with the secure link the customer uses to enter their new refund details.
If you remove it, the send button is disabled and a warning appears — without the link, the customer has no way to complete the refund.
Message length
Messages are limited to 459 characters. A counter under the field shows where you are.
Sharing the link another way
After a follow-up has been sent, a Get Link button appears on the card.
This copies the same follow-up link to your clipboard, so you can send it however suits — email, a message in another system, or reading it out over the phone. Useful when the phone number on file is the reason the payout failed in the first place.
What happens next
The customer opens the link and submits their refund details again.
When they do, the failed state is cleared and the refund proceeds as normal through your usual disbursement process. You don't need to re-approve it.
Failed vs Returned
These two statuses are easy to confuse:
Failed — the payout attempt errored and the money never left. This is what the follow-up card is for.
Returned — the money went out but came back, typically occurs when a customer does not claim the funds after 30 days.
Both mean the customer hasn't been paid, and both are worth reviewing regularly.
Changing the default message
The template used to pre-fill the follow-up message lives with your other customer-facing wording, under Customer App Settings → App Content → Notifications. Update it there and every future follow-up starts from the new version.
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