Cashfree announces instant refunds for online payments in India

Cashfree has introduced a first-of-its-kind solution in the country’s e-commerce space: instant refunds on online payments for e-commerce businesses. With Cashfree’s instant refunds, e-commerce platforms would be able to immediately return their customers’ money through their original mode of payment, whether it is credit or debit card, bank account, online wallet or UPI.

The instant refund solution can be availed without any changes to the existing Cashfree payment gateway integration. It also integrates with other payment gateways, internal product or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) process through a simple API (Application Programming Interface).

Commenting on this move, Akash Sinha, CEO and Co-founder of Cashfree said: “In India’s e-commerce industry, businesses face the significant challenge of the lack of clear timelines to refund customers’ money. Slow refunds are a significant pain point as the process can take 4 - 5 working days or longer. By introducing instant refunds on online payments for the first time in India, Cashfree makes it possible for businesses to automate the whole refund process, thereby increasing customer trust and satisfaction. Our instant refund solution is already live with our first set of customers and we have seen swift adoption from a growing number of businesses. We expect to process up to 1 Crore refunds instantly this year.”

Cashfree’s latest launch is a timely move towards enhancing consumer trust in the digital payments space in India. As part of the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs’ proposed guidelines for e-commerce under the new Consumer Protection Act, firms would be granted a maximum of 14 days to effect any refund requests from customers.

At the moment, there will be no additional charges on instant refunds for Cashfree payment gateway users till December 31st, 2019. In the coming weeks, Cashfree also plans on adding refunds for Cash on Delivery (COD) orders into its instant refund solution to allow integrated refund management for businesses.