Payouts and refunds

Make payments and refunds from your merchant account.

A payout is a payment from a TrueLayer merchant account to a customer. There are two types of payout:

  • A payment from a merchant account to the same payment details previously used to make a payment to the merchant account. This is also known as a closed-loop payout.
  • A payment from a merchant account to an external account or business account, with no need for the account to have previously made a payment to the merchant account. This is also known as an open-loop payout.

A refund is a payment or payments made back to a user account that previously paid into your merchant account. The refund payment/s cannot exceed the total of the initial payment the user made.

Payout and refund requirements

When you make a payout or refund with the /payouts or /refunds endpoint, it generates an id. You can use the ID to check the status of your payout or refund. Unlike a single payment or mandate, this ID is not required to authenticate the payment.

In order to create a closed-loop payout, open-loop payout, or refund, you need to provide the details below:

Payment typeRequired details
Closed-loop payout- Merchant account id
- Currency
- Beneficiary
Open-loop payout- Beneficiary
- Currency
- Account holder name
- Account identifiers (SCAN or IBAN)
Refund- id of the payment to refund
- Reference

Learn more about how to create a closed-loop payout, open-loop payout, or refund.

After you create a payout or refund you can check its status to find out if it was successful or identify why it failed.

For more information about the providers we support by country, see the Help Centre.