CarrierBillingRefund API Description

API Description

The CAMARA “Carrier Billing Refund” API is aimed at facilitating the reimbursement of funds to shoppers in scenarios such as product returns or erroneous charges. Upon the request of a given shopper, the API allows merchants (commonly through a channel partner or payment aggregator) to initiate refund requests to CSPs. The API supports reimbursement of the full amount of a captured payment or a partial refund.

When the API is used within Direct Carrier Billing services offered by carriers, refunds are typically executed asynchronously, being reflected in the next bill or prepaid balance. However, it is at the discretion of each carrier to decide how refunds are made effective.

It’s important to emphasize that refunds can only be initiated for payments that have already been captured. Payments that have not yet been captured should be canceled instead.

Use Cases

The Carrier Billing Refund API is used by merchants that implement Direct Carrier Billing as a payment method. All use cases require the existence of a previous purchase using a Carrier Billing service, so there must be an identifier for the previous purchase transaction, to which the refund is linked:

• Request for a total or partial refund of a purchase due to the return of the product or service. The conditions for accepting and processing the refund are subject to the specific conditions of each merchant.

• Request for a refund due to erroneous or improper charges.

Benefits

• Transparency for the end user. The API allows the merchant to manage the refund with the operator directly or through a payment aggregator. The buyer keeps the merchant as a point of contact for the refund claim.

• Uniform interface for merchants and aggregators. The implementation of the CAMARA API by operators allows reducing friction in the integration of merchants and aggregators, since they can use the same integration.

• The API allows for a high degree of flexibility and granularity in terms of the structure of amounts returned per item, taxes, etc.

API Portfolio: Payments and Charging

SubProject Wiki: Carrier Billing CheckOut
(incl. how to meet the team)

API Wiki: Carrier Billing Refund

API Repository: Carrier Billing CheckOut

API Repository Status: Sandbox

API Status: Initial

API Version(s) and Release Date(s):

• v0.1.1 – (Nov 23, 2024), part of Fall24 meta release

• v0.1.0 – (Sep 5, 2024), first public release

API availability: Information which APIs are available in which country and network, and how to get access can be found on the GSMA public launch status page.