How to “reauthorize” a refund made in error within NMI

“I accidentally refunded a card I did not intend to refund! Can I re-authorize a refunded transaction?”

A reader asked me this question, and I wanted to respond here so everyone can benefit.

One of our merchants using WIX website builder received a call from a customer. That customer was working from home, watching 3 kids, and listening to a podcast while they ordered some dietary supplements for their elderly parents!!! (fun huh?) Anyway, they accidentally ordered the same product twice a half hour apart! The merchant got the call the next day and obviously wanted to refund one of those sales for their very nice, but very frazzled customer.

As we have discussed here before; issuing a refund is very easy and simple. Just log in to your NMI payment gateway account and on the left choose ‘Reports’ (found under the heading Trans Reports — short for Transaction Reports). That will take you to a screen with two sections outlined with a red bar across the top and say Transaction Snapshot or Search Transactions, skip the top section and go to the section entitled, “Search Transactions”.

Within this section you can more readily identify a single transaction. For example, you can choose the customer’s last name or email address, both of which you will have on hand while searching for a particular transaction.  After choosing a particular date range, click Submit and you’ll be taken to a screen listing all the transaction(s) that fit your filters. Click on the ID number listed in Blue. It’s a link that will take you to another screen with many more details about that specific transaction.

From there, under the Transaction Detail heading, you can click ‘Refund’ and that transaction will be refunded to your customer’s card.

All very easy and straightforward, right?

The problem

But, what if you’re like the merchant I mentioned earlier who was trying to refund one of two orders placed accidentally by his customer. In his desire to get the money back to his very stressed customer, he mistakenly refunded BOTH transactions! So, now he’s stuck and not getting paid, right? Refunding a double order is a really high-risk endeavor huh? One click and his money is gone for good?

Absolutely not. You can re-authorize a transaction in NMI and still get paid. And it’s very easy to do.

If you find yourself in a situation like this, just find the transaction that you want to re-authorize by following the instructions above. When you are in the Transaction Detail section, simply click ‘Auth’ in the gray bar found just below the Transaction Detail heading.

That will re-authorize the card and you will get paid!!!

Please let me know of any other questions you might have and I’ll address them either privately through email or from this blog.

You can reach me at John (at) taskerpaymentgateways.com.

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