Why are my voids or refunds being declined?

Gateway or merchant account limits

Please note the following Gateways cannot perform voids Clover, Helcim and Stripe 

There are a few reasons your voids or refunds may be declined.  For both of these types of transactions, your merchant account or gateway likely has a limit on the dollar value of a transaction that will be allowed to be voided or refunded.  This is to prevent potential fraud or nefarious activity.  You may be able to have this limit increased by contacting your merchant account provider - Benji Pays can not change this limit for you.

Refunds over initial value

Refunds are tied to an initial transaction, you cannot refund more than the initial transaction value.  If you previously refunded all or a portion of a transaction and are attempting to refund that transaction again you will get a decline. 

For example:

1. Monday you process a payment for $100
2. Wednesday you refund $80 from the Monday transaction.  The refund is approved.
3. Thursday you attempt to refund $50 from the Monday transaction. The refund is declined as you would have refunded a total of $130 for a $100 purchase.  You would be able to refund up to $20 though.

Voids for transactions already settled

You can only void a transaction if the merchant batch it is associated with is still open. Most gateways keep the batch open until the end of the day and then automatically close the batch, however you may be able to change this behaviour in your gateway. If the batch for the transaction is closed, the void will fail and you will need to perform a refund.

Moneris Void Declined with "sendMessage(): Merchant Could not initialize db object for request"

If you are receiving this in your transactions messages when voiding to your Moneris Gateway, this means the transaction has already been settled and cannot be voided.  This error message is being returned by Moneris' systems. You will need to perform a refund.

• sendMessage(): Merchant Could not initialize db object for request

I don't even see a void option?

Some gateways, like Stripe, do not support voids and so you will not see that options in Benji Pays for transactions processed through those gateways.