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Metrics type: Supporting Metrics • Category: Payment Gateway

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At a glance

The percentage of Viva Payments revenue refunded to customers in the period. The merchant-initiated returns view (separate from chargebacks). High refund rates often signal product quality, sizing, expectation-mismatch, or fulfilment problems upstream.

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your Viva Payments data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A pan-EU fashion retailer (“Mistral Mode”) on Smart Checkout, free returns within 30 days. Window 03 Apr 26 to 02 May 26.
What the merchant should notice:
  1. Fashion-typical online refund rate is 8, 12% in the EU. A 9.1% online figure is acceptable; 10.7% on UK is at the upper edge but not yet alerting. The 10% threshold is a generic guard; fashion-specific benchmarking should reset it higher.
  2. POS at 1.3% is the structural floor. Customers who try-on before buying rarely return. The blended rate is dragged toward the online figure because online is 79% of revenue.
  3. GBP rate higher than EUR rate is a signal. Possible causes: shipping delay to UK customers (Brexit customs friction), sizing preference difference (UK customers buy aspirationally and return more), or returns-policy clarity in English vs French is poorer. Worth investigating.
  4. Subscription rebills at 0% is good. Recurring rebill refund rate above 1% suggests dunning or churn-management flow is too generous (auto-refunding cancellations). Watch the upstream subscription platform.
  5. A 1pp jump in refund rate ≈ EUR 4,000 less monthly net. On EUR 397k revenue, every 1% in refund rate represents roughly EUR 4,000 in deducted gross. Quick-win analysis: top 3 refund SKUs almost always drive 50, 70% of the volume.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in the Viva Payments Dashboard: viva.com/business/account/login. Closest comparable view:
Viva Business → Sales → Refunds (filter same date range; “Refund / Net Sales” tile)
Other relevant views:
  • Disputes view: chargeback cases, separate from refunds.
  • Sales overview: shows refund total but rate has to be calculated.
  • Per-product Returns (where commerce platform integrated): SKU-level breakdown.
Why our number may legitimately differ from the Viva Dashboard: Cross-connector reconciliation:

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

What’s a healthy refund rate? Vertical-dependent. Fashion: 8, 12% online. Beauty / consumables: 1, 4%. Electronics: 4, 8%. Food / perishables: <1% (returns generally not allowed). Anything 50% above your trailing 90-day average is worth investigating regardless of vertical. Refund vs chargeback, what’s the difference? A refund is merchant-initiated (you decide to return funds). A chargeback is buyer-initiated through the issuing bank (the buyer disputed the transaction and Visa/Mastercard rules force a return). Refunds are cheap (small Viva refund processing charge); chargebacks are expensive (~ EUR 15, 25 scheme fee per case + funds held in dispute). High refund rate often prevents chargebacks because customers who refund don’t escalate. Partial refunds, how counted? Both numerator (refund value) and reasoning are partial-aware. A 30% partial refund of EUR 100 contributes EUR 30 to the refund total and the original EUR 100 still counts in the denominator (revenue). Many partial refunds at the same rate is normal for shipping-only refunds or partial returns. My refund rate jumped, where to look first? (1) Top SKUs returned (commerce-platform Returns view), 1, 3 SKUs typically drive 50, 70%. (2) Recent product launch quality issues. (3) Sizing / spec mismatch, common after photography or copy changes. (4) Shipping delays causing “didn’t arrive in time” returns. Does Viva charge me for refunds? Viva typically charges a small refund processing fee (often EUR 0.10 per refund or zero, depending on merchant agreement). The original interchange/scheme fees on the sale are not refunded back to you, that’s a hidden cost of high refund rates that doesn’t show in this card. Is recurring rebill cancellation counted as a refund? Only if you actively refund a charged rebill. Cancelling a future rebill (no money moves) is not a refund. Refunding a charged rebill is. Multi-currency, GBP refund vs EUR revenue? Per-currency. The card shows GBP refund / GBP revenue separately from EUR / EUR. Don’t divide GBP refund by EUR revenue. JP Morgan ownership, refund handling change? No change to refund mechanics, fees, or API.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Refund Rate is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Viva Payments and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.