Global Payments and Fiserv - Flat Rate/Fiserv - Interchange Plus are the only Merchants we work with where you can apply a refund in IO and have it automatically get refunded back to the customer through the Merchant.
With other processors, you will need to manually record a negative payment in IO and process the refund separately through that company's software.
For example, if you are using Square, you must manually refund the customer from Square's dashboard. Once complete, record the refund in IO manually.
Recharging vs. Refunding
Many of our merchants offer the ability to recharge cards. However, recharging and refunding are two different features:
- Recharging: charging a saved credit card on file (returning customers, paying balances, scheduled payments, etc.)
- Refunding: crediting the customer the amount agreed upon (full balance, deposit, etc.)
Who Can Issue Refunds
The Refund button on a lead's payments is controlled by its own worker permission, Lead Payment Refund. This lets you allow a worker, for example a Sales Rep, to take payments without being able to send money back.
A worker can refund a payment through the processor only when both of these permissions are set to Full Access:
| Permission | What it allows | Access levels |
|---|---|---|
| Lead Payments | Add or edit payments | None, Read Only, Full Access |
| Lead Payment Refund | Refund Contract payments through the payment processor | None, Full Access |
To change it, go to Settings > Workers, open the worker, and open the Permissions section.
Note: when this permission was added in the October 2026 release, every worker was given the same access they already had for Lead Payments. Nobody lost the ability to refund. Set Lead Payment Refund to None for the workers who should not issue refunds.
The account owner login is not limited by worker permissions. See Workers - Permissions for the full list of permissions.
Processing a Refund Through IO for Global Payments and Fiserv
Please see this article here on how to process refunds for Global Payments and Fiserv - Flat Rate/Fiserv - Interchange Plus.
Recording a Refund
This is how to record a refund once you refund the customer's card in your merchant's software. This is what you would do if you are not using Global Payments:
To record a refund, enter the refund amount in the Amount field, prefixed with a negative sign. You may also select the payment type. For example, choose Cash if the refund was issued in cash. Please note that this process only records the refund in the system; it does not physically process the payment. The recorded refund will be reflected in the Total Balance Paid, so adjust the amount as necessary to ensure accurate records.
Related Links
You can find a list of all the services we support with each processor here: https://rental.software/support/knowledge-base/article/accepting-credit-cards-online.