1. If you do not have sufficient funds in your account to cover a Card transaction.
2. The purchase will be declined and plans to pay for goods or services by credit card will fail.
3. If there are insufficient funds in your account at the time of up-to-date transactions.
4. We may deduct from any available funds an amount equal to the negative balance incurred.
5. Funds on our cards that can’t be used because they’re not enough for the next payment exceed it’s limit.

I have never seen this question asked before. But it is something I can understand as someone who has been in the business for a while and knows that every once in awhile things happen where a cardholder will take issue with the merchant over some sort of charge or fee. Of course, I am not saying you should try to do something like that – but if you use your green dot cards for merchant processing; there may be times where you get requests to refund charges. If so (and depending on how old the card is), can they ask for those refunds?

The short answer is: yes, although they are better off just requesting it through their bank (assuming they do not want to contact Visa or Mastercard directly). It may take a while to get the money back – but it will happen. Even if you are not in a position to refund the cardholder, you can still go ahead and contact your processor on their behalf as long as you feel comfortable doing so (which is why I would suggest having them contact their bank first).

I do want to point out that there is a difference between “negative” transactions and refunds. Negative transactions are when a cardholder has signed for something and did not receive it or had an incorrect amount given to them; whereas refunds are basically when they just want their money back. This article deals with negative transactions more than anything else; however, many of the rules apply even if they just want a refund since that situation is probably not going to be much different than a negative transaction.

Before I get into everything, it is important that you understand what we are talking about here and the difference between merchant processing (which most people deal with daily), bank issuing (what Bank of America does for its customers), and Visa or Mastercard as far as major card brands go along with how they issue cards.

Merchant Processing: The main responsibility for disputes comes down to the processor because when everything goes well, it is their name on the sales receipt. However, if anything negative happens involving a sale – it falls into two categories: firstly, resolving an “incorrect charge” which typically only happens in situations where someone ends up getting charged more than they were supposed to be charged (like a store charging way more than they said they would or a restaurant making up phony charges) – so the processor will refund what was taken in addition to possibly having the retailer investigate the situation. The other is if it is an actual charge that should have been on the card but never went through; in which case, you are not liable for it since whatever actually happened did not go through your card terminal/payment gateway.

A few things I want to say about each of these situations:

Wrong Charge : This can involve anything from somebody putting their balance on their jcp account and forgetting about it until getting a bill for $500 when all they bought was a toothbrush to someone stealing another person’s card and using it (or stealing a card out of the store’s register) – pretty much anything that has you end up going over what they were supposed to pay. This is usually your problem, not Visa’s or Mastercard’s unless there was something blatantly wrong with how you took their information and/or processed it (like turning down their chip).

This can involve anything from somebody putting their balance on their jcp account and forgetting about it until getting a bill for $500 when all they bought was a toothbrush to someone stealing another person’s card and using it (or stealing a card out of the store’s register) – pretty much anything that has you end up going over what they were supposed to pay. This is usually your problem, not Visa’s or Mastercard’s unless there was something blatantly wrong with how you took their information and/or processed it (like turning down their chip). Incorrect Charge : This is much more common (as long as the card was not stolen beforehand) – you charge $10.00 for a coffee to JCPenney’s card but they only get charged $5.00; maybe the cashier accidentally entered $20.00 instead of $10.00, etc. Your merchant processor will refund them the full amount even if JCP does not want to give them everything back because they feel like they were overcharged – since the transaction did not go through your terminal/processing network, you are in no way obligated by Visa or Mastercard to pay it back. Some processors will do this themselves but a good processor will let you know that the next time you handle a transaction on that card, “this amount is pending and will not be charged.” This is very important because if the customer tries to buy $500 of gift cards at Wal-Mart with their JCPenney’s card and it shows up as $5.00 then they are going to go through the roof and assume you stole their money; so when someone does this in your store – everything has to come through again and since it does not show up as being processed yet, give them back whatever cash they were trying to charge (unless there is more than one customer doing this).

FAQ :