How to refund contributions through Stripe
A step-by-step guide on how to issue refunds via Stripe, with a critical reminder to cancel active subscriptions to prevent future charges.
Occasionally donors will request refunds for one or more charges made to their account. It’s important to honor these requests quickly to avoid costly payment disputes.
- Refunds can only be issued for charges that have already been made (you cannot schedule refunds ahead of time)
- Refunds may take 5-10 business to be issued to the contributor
- While you can safely issue refunds through your Stripe dashboard, other changes to subscriptions or customer data are not supported and can result in errors and a loss of revenue. Please read more about this here.
Refunding charges on subscriptions
Refunds are issued for individual charges. In most cases, subscribers requesting a refund also want you to cancel their subscription.
Issuing a refund does NOT block future charges from being created and you must also cancel the person’s active subscription.
To issue a refund:
- Login to your Stripe dashboard → https://dashboard.stripe.com/dashboard
- Navigate to the Transactions page. Find the charge that you would like to cancel (you can do this by searching for the contributor’s name or email)
- In the top-right corner of the page, select “Refund”