Managing refunds
The refund feature allows you to process payment returns directly from each order in WooCommerce, with automatic updates to the payment status in Mercado Pago. Likewise, when a refund is initiated from Mercado Pago, WooCommerce receives a notification and synchronizes the payment status without any manual intervention.
Refunds can be issued either by amount or by item, and they can be partial or full in both cases — allowing you to return only part of the amount or only specific items, depending on the needs of the operation.
The process takes place after the payment has been captured. They are transactions that reverse a charge and the amount paid is returned to the buyer. This means the customer will receive back, in their account or on their credit card statement, the amount paid for a given product or service.
In this documentation, you will find instructions on how to issue a full or partial refund for a purchase directly from your store.
Follow the steps below to process a refund directly in the WooCommerce admin panel:
- In the WooCommerce admin panel, go to Orders.
- Locate and open the order you want to refund.
- On the order page, scroll to the items section and click the Refund button.
- Enter the amount to be returned to the buyer. You can do this in two ways:
- Partial refund: returns part of the order amount.
- Full refund: returns the full amount of the order.
- To confirm the refund, click Refund $X via Mercado Pago – {payment method used}.
The refund will be processed and the order status will be updated automatically.
Refund status
After a refund is processed, the order status will update depending on the refund type:
| Refund type | WooCommerce status | Mercado Pago status |
| Partial refund | Processing (partially refunded) | Approved / partially_refunded |
| Full refund | Refunded (fully refunded) / by_admin | Refunded / refunded |
status_detail field with the value by_admin will always appear when the refund is initiated in WooCommerce.Error messages
If an error occurs while processing the refund, an informational message will appear directly in the store. The main scenarios that may cause errors are:
| Error type | Description |
| Invalid amount | The amount must be greater than zero and cannot exceed the total order amount. |
| Pending payment | Refunds can only be processed for approved payments. |
| Invalid credentials | The access credentials are incorrect or expired. Renew them in the Mercado Pago plugin settings. |
| Insufficient amount | Your account does not have enough amount. Add funds to complete the refund. |
| Payment too old | The payment is no longer eligible for a refund. The maximum refund period is 180 days after payment approval. |
| Internal error | An error occurred when processing the refund. Try again later or contact Mercado Pago Support. |
For more information about payment statuses, see the Payment status documentation.