Refunds on mobile money
3 min readLast updated 16 September 2026 Read as plain text
The customer gets the full amount back, you are debited only what you were actually credited, and the refund itself costs you nothing extra.
A card refund reverses the original authorisation. Mobile money has no equivalent, so a refund here is an instruction sent back through the same rail the payment came in on, returning the money to the account that paid.
The part worth understanding is the arithmetic, because gross and net are different numbers and the difference is where every awkward conversation about refunds starts.
Gross out, net back
The customer paid a gross amount. A gateway fee came out of it, and you were credited the net. When you refund, the customer receives the gross they paid, and your balance is debited the net you actually received.
You are not charged the gateway fee a second time, and you do not get the original one back. It was spent on processing a payment that genuinely happened.
- The customer is made whole: they get back exactly what left their wallet.
- You are debited what landed in your balance, never more.
- The refund itself carries no additional Ultraner fee.
Partial refunds
You can refund part of a payment, and then part of it again, until the original is fully refunded. Each one takes its proportional share of the net, and Ultraner tracks what is left so a payment can never be refunded past its own value.
A full refund debits exactly what you were credited, rather than drifting a unit off through rounding on the way.
Where refunds are available
Not every mobile money rail supports a true refund. Where the rail does, refunding is a single instruction against the original payment. Where it does not, the way to return money is a payout to the customer’s number, which behaves like any other payout and carries a payout fee.
The practical difference for you is small. The practical difference for your records is not: a refund stays attached to the payment it reverses, while a payout is a separate movement that somebody has to connect back by hand later.
Refund to the number that paid
It sounds obvious, and it is the most common way a refund goes wrong: a customer offers a different number because the first belongs to a relative. Once money lands on somebody’s wallet it is theirs, and there is no recall.
When to credit instead
For small amounts, offering credit against a future purchase avoids a transfer and is often what the customer prefers. For anything the customer is unhappy about, refund properly and quickly. Speed on a refund buys more goodwill than being right about a fee ever will.