How do I refund my members and customers?

Let’s go over the process for issuing refunds for payments made to you on Patreon. You can refund current and former members who have had at least one payment processed to you and refund any purchases made from customers on your shop.

Please note that while the examples below show a US Dollar ($) amount, this can also show in any of our supported currencies, depending on your and your members’ currencies. To learn more about our supported currencies, please visit this help center article: Patreon's supported currencies.

How refunds work at Patreon

• Patreon won’t refund members or customers on a creator’s behalf. That said, there are exceptional circumstances that may warrant a Patreon-initiated refund. This includes the rare occasion of a refund for fraud, or billing system errors
• You can issue refunds from Patreon if you have available funds to cover the refund in your Patreon balance. If you don’t have funds available in your Patreon balance to cover the refund request, the refund will need to be processed outside of Patreon — there’s currently not a way to fund or add money to your creator balance to complete refunds
• Creators can refund membership bills and/or purchases within 90 days of their processing date. Most banks won't process requested refunds beyond 3 months of the original transaction. If you need to refund a transaction that is older than 90 days, you can do so off of Patreon

Refunding members

1. Log in to your Patreon creator account
2. Click on the Audience button from the left navigation bar, then click on the Relationship manager option
3. Search for individual members by name, or use the filters to create lists of members you’d like to refund
4. Select the member to refund and scroll down to their payment history at the bottom, right-hand side of the page
5. Click the Refund button next to the bill you’d like to refund
6. Review the date or supported post before confirming your refund with the Refund button. Please note that refunds are not reversible

When you reload the page, their status will update from Paid to Refunded.  And the option to refund that bill will no longer be available. 

We send the member an email confirmation – they can expect the refund to go back to the original payment method within 10 business days. If the member does not receive it after a week, confirm that they haven’t disputed the charge offsite with their payment provider.

Refunding customers

Funds from products purchased from Web and Android will appear as pending for up to 7 days before they can be withdrawn from your balance. Funds from product sales from iOS in-app purchases will remain pending for up to 75 days before they will be available for payout to account for the time Apple requires to process and confirm the funds.

For refunds on products purchased through the iOS app, customers have the option to reach out directly to you, as they normally would for other commerce purchases, or through Apple. Apple will process refunds within 60 days of the purchase taking place:

• Through Patreon: You can refund purchases as you normally would for other Commerce purchases
• Through Apple: Customers can request a refund from Apple via reportaproblem.apple.com. Apple will handle the refund on your behalf and communicate with the customer on the status of the refund. If the refund is granted, funds will be issued back to their Apple account.

In both cases, if the refund is approved, customers will get a full refund for the entire purchase amount.

As long as you have the funds available to withdraw in your balance, you can cover customer refund requests, here’s how:

1. Make sure you are logged in and in your creator account profile
2. Click on Audience from the left navigation side
3. Click on the Sales tab from the top menu
4. Search for the customer you want to refund, either by using the search bar or by going through the list of customers
5. Click on the customer’s name to open a side panel with their order details
6. Click on the Issue refund button

Please keep in mind that refunds may take 5-7 business days to process and cannot be undone. As soon as you refund a product, it will be removed from the customer’s purchases, and they will immediately lose access to the content.

Refunding annual members

If you offer Annual memberships you can issue a full or partial refund of a member’s payment to you. 

To refund an annual member:

1. Log in to your creator account
2. Click on the Audience button from the left navigation bar, then click on the Relationship manager option
3. Locate the annual member requesting a refund
4. Click on their name in your member list view. Your member’s information will populate on the right-hand side
5. Click the More button and then click Refund or scroll down to the Payment history section and click the Refund option there
6. Select the charge you’d like to refund and choose either a full or partial refund of the remainder of the member’s pledge amount
7. Confirm by clicking the Refund button

What do I need to know about issuing annual membership refunds? 

• You have two options for refunding annual members: a full refund or the remainder of the pledged amount (a partial refund).
• Members who receive a full refund will lose access to your member-only content and benefits as soon as they are refunded. By being refunded, a member is essentially ending their membership term. 
• Members who receive a partial refund will lose access to your member-only content and benefits after their last month of membership (the month that you issue the refund).
• Once a member is refunded, they can rejoin, and they will be charged their new membership amount and terms immediately to unlock access.

Review all refunds deducted from your balance

You’ll find a chronological list of all refunds that have been processed from your Patreon balance in the Refunds CSV of your Payout Dashboard. You can click the download refunds as CSV button for your records. 

The amount deducted from your balance will be listed in the creator’s share section of this report. Hover over the question mark tooltips for more information about the amounts listed.