Refunding virtual credit cards (VCCs)

We offer a guided 60 to 90-day process for virtual credit card (VCC) refunds. The process is designed to give your clarity and transparency over your cash flow and provide you with enough time to administer refunds to avoid chargebacks.

What’s in this article

When you need to refund a VCC

You'll need to refund a VCC if you’ve already charged it in either of the two situations:

1. You agreed to waive the applicable fees when a reservation is cancelled, modified or in cases of no-show.
2. A reservation is cancelled due to a Force Majeure event. In these cases, guests should not incur any costs or fees for stays they're unable to make, and we'll waive all commission on the associated reservations.

In both cases, we'll repay the guest, and you'll need to refund the same VCC associated with the reservation.

Refunding a VCC

You can refund a VCC the same way you would any other credit card. There are two ways to do this in the extranet.

Using the Finance tab:

1. Log in to the extranet
2. Click on Finance then on Virtual cards management
3. Click on Virtual cards to refund to see all the VCCs you need to refund along with the refund reason, refund deadline and the refund amount
4. Choose View card details and process the refund using your point of sale system (POS) or credit card machine

Using the Reservations tab:

1. Log in to the extranet
2. Click on Reservations, then select a booking number to access the reservation details
3. Choose View card details and enter the VCC details to process the refund using your POS or credit card machine

VCCs can be refunded even after they've expired – all you need to do is enter the current month as the expiry date instead. We’ll return the money to your guest.

What to do if you’re having trouble refunding a VCC

If you're having trouble with refunding a VCC, you may need to reach out to your Payment Service Provider (PSP) to find out what went wrong and resolve the issue. The refund process may also differ according to your POS system or credit card machine. We recommend contacting your bank or financial institution for assistance.

Here are some common situations that might cause issues:

1. Your POS or credit card machine is blocked. The main reasons for blocks are:

• You've already charged the VCC in the past. Each VCC can only be used once, after which the transaction information is no longer accessible to your POS machine.
• The amount you’re trying to refund is higher than the available balance on the VCC.
• Your provider does not allow you to refund VCCs.

1. You receive an unknown POS/credit card machine error.

• If this happens and your PSP can't provide you with helpful information, please try again later or the next day.

1. You don’t have enough funds at the moment.

• You have a grace period of 60 to 90 days to refund VCCs. Please make sure you have enough funds in your account before the due date to avoid a chargeback.

If you don’t refund a VCC in time, we'll raise a chargeback to recover any lost funds.

Disputing a VCC refund

You need to refund a VCC in cases when a reservation was cancelled or modified, and we've refunded the guest. Therefore, the amount we paid you using a VCC must be returned to avoid a chargeback. If you disagree with a refund, you can always reach out to your local support team for help.

What if you've refunded a guest directly?

The reason you're being asked to refund a VCC is that we've already refunded the guest. If you've refunded a guest yourself, please ask them to return the amount to you, or they will receive a double refund. You must still refund the VCC to us to avoid a chargeback.

What happens if you don't refund a VCC?

We'll send you reminders to refund a VCC over two to three months after we've refunded a guest. Not doing so in time or in full will result in us raising a chargeback to recover the funds owed to us.

You may also lose your eligibility to charge VCCs for future bookings before the check-in date.

What is a chargeback?

A chargeback is when a credit or debit card charge is reversed by an authorised bank. This process is put in place to resolve disputes between merchants and consumers. 

When a bank approves a chargeback request, it refunds the original amount to the cardholder – in this case, us. We'll initiate a chargeback if we've refunded a guest, but you've not refunded us the VCC associated with the reservation on time. We'll send you two email reminders before raising a chargeback.

What is the timeline for chargebacks?

Once we've refunded a guest, you'll receive an email with instructions for refunding the VCC associated with the reservation. There’s a 60 to 90-day period for you to administer the refund, during which we’ll send you two reminder emails.

Here's a breakdown of what you'll receive:

• Day of guest refund: you'll receive an email confirming the guest has been refunded, together with details on refunding the associated VCC.
• First reminder: on the third day of the next month, we'll send you a reminder email containing all the details you need to process these refunds. 
• Second reminder: on the 15th day of the month after we sent the first reminder, we'll send you an overview of outstanding refunds with a request to process them to avoid chargebacks. 
• Start of chargeback process: on the 30th day of that same month, we'll hand over details of outstanding refunds to our credit card company and the PSP to begin the chargeback process.

Additional fees associated with chargebacks

Payment service providers usually charge a fee for processing a chargeback. The amount varies depending on your payment setup. To avoid incurring this additional charge, we recommend refunding VCCs within the specified due date.

More information about VCCs and Payments

Everything you need to know about virtual credit cards 

Cost savings and earlier activation dates for virtual credit cards

How Online Payments work 

Read our Payments FAQ