Refunds, Cancellations, and Fee Credits

This page explains two different things:

1. How a shopper requests a cancellation or refund from a merchant that uses OpenMerchant; and
2. When a merchant receives a credit for fees charged by OpenMerchant Inc (“OpenMerchant”).

The merchant-fee rules apply prospectively when accepted as part of the applicable agreement. A later policy change does not remove a refund entitlement under an earlier agreement governing a completed transaction.

OpenMerchant helps merchants publish products and services to AI agents, route orders and refund requests, and enable payments through the merchant’s own payment account. The merchant—not OpenMerchant—is the seller and merchant of record for the shopper’s purchase.

If you bought something from a merchant

The merchant’s policy applies

Your purchase is directly from the merchant identified before checkout and on your order confirmation or receipt. That merchant is responsible for the product or service, fulfillment, customer support, cancellations, returns, and refunds.

The return, refund, or cancellation policy shown to you before purchase applies, subject to any rights that cannot be limited by law. A merchant cannot rely on a material restriction that was not clearly disclosed before you authorized the purchase.

How to cancel or request a refund

Use any of these methods:

1. Follow the cancellation or refund instructions in your order confirmation, receipt, or merchant account;
2. Contact the merchant directly using the email address, telephone number, support link, or other contact shown before purchase or on your receipt;
3. Ask the AI assistant or agent you used to submit a cancellation or refund request, if that feature is supported; or
4. If you cannot identify or reach the merchant, email support@openmerchant.dev with the merchant name, order identifier, purchase date, amount, and a description of the problem. OpenMerchant will route the request or help identify the correct merchant, but OpenMerchant ordinarily cannot decide the merchant’s refund policy for it.

Using an assistant is an additional option—not the only way to request help.

What you should see before purchase

Before you authorize a purchase, the merchant must clearly provide:

• Its legal or trading name and direct support contact;
• What you are buying;
• The total price, currency, taxes, shipping, and other charges;
• Material delivery, performance, reservation, access, or renewal terms;
• The applicable return, refund, and cancellation rules; and
• Simple instructions explaining how to cancel or request a refund.

OpenMerchant requires merchants to keep these terms consistent across the merchant’s storefront, agent checkout, confirmation, receipt, and support process.

Physical goods

The merchant’s disclosed policy will state the applicable return window, item-condition requirements, return instructions, who pays return shipping, any lawful restocking charge, and exclusions. If an item is missing, damaged, defective, counterfeit, or materially different from its description, contact the merchant promptly.

The policy must be publicly accessible without signing in and explain when the return window starts, the return method and destination, refund-processing timing, and whether non-defective/change-of-mind returns are accepted. Merchant Center return settings and product-level exceptions must match the merchant's actual policy. OpenMerchant's platform-fee policy is not the merchant's shopper-return policy.

Services, reservations, and classes

The merchant’s disclosed policy will state any cancellation deadline, rescheduling option, no-show rule, and lawful fee. The policy shown before purchase controls unless applicable law gives you additional rights.

If the merchant cancels, cannot perform, or materially changes the service, you are generally entitled to the remedy stated in the merchant’s policy and any remedy required by law.

Recurring purchases

Where a recurring offering is supported, the merchant must disclose the renewal frequency, price or calculation method, trial conversion terms, cancellation method, and when cancellation takes effect before authorization. Canceling future renewals does not automatically refund a completed billing period, but mandatory rights and the merchant's disclosed policy still apply. Closing an OpenMerchant merchant account does not cancel a shopper's separate subscription with that merchant.

Digital products and immediately available services

A merchant may state that a digital product or immediately available service is “non-refundable after first access or use” only when that restriction was shown prominently immediately before purchase and you affirmatively accepted it.

First access or use must be tied to an objective event, such as a successful download, meaningful access to paid content, a completed paid session, an API call, or use of a paid feature. Merely opening a login screen, unsuccessfully attempting to log in, or logging in only to discover or report that the product does not work should not by itself count as meaningful use.

Even after access or use, the restriction does not eliminate refunds or remedies required by law and should not apply to:

• A duplicate or unauthorized charge;
• A failure to provide the purchased access;
• A product or service that is materially defective or materially different from its description; or
• A material billing error.

Login or first use does not automatically waive a statutory cooling-off or withdrawal right. Depending on the jurisdiction and whether the purchase is digital content or an ongoing service, separate consent to early performance, an acknowledgment, confirmation, or full performance may be needed. A no-refund label must not be used on an agent surface that requires returns or makes that offering ineligible.

Response and refund timing

OpenMerchant requires merchants to acknowledge a cancellation or refund request within two business days and ordinarily decide it within five business days. A decision may reasonably take longer when the disclosed policy requires a returned item, inspection, or additional information.

Approved refunds are issued through the original transaction and payment method. If that is not possible, the merchant must follow the payment provider's permitted alternative process and applicable law. Bank or wallet posting time varies; a refund request, approval, or pending status is not proof that the money has reached you. The merchant must communicate delays and help trace a missing refund using available provider references.

Canceling before capture normally prevents capture or releases an authorization rather than refunding a completed payment; a temporary bank hold may take time to disappear. After capture, a refund is a separate payment-provider action. Merchants must fund pending refunds and must not issue duplicate reimbursement while a dispute or another refund is already resolving the same amount.

OpenMerchant may transmit a merchant-approved refund, one implementing the merchant's expressly configured rules, or one required by a binding legal, provider, or network requirement, within active permissions. That does not make OpenMerchant the seller or provide unrestricted authority over a disconnected account.

Disputes and chargebacks

Contacting the merchant first often resolves an issue faster and creates a clear support record. Nothing on this page limits any right you may have to contact your payment provider or dispute a charge.

OpenMerchant may preserve and provide relevant records—such as the merchant identity, order, authorization, policy version, delivery or access events, IP or device data where available, cancellation history, and support communications—to the merchant, payment provider, card network, or other authorized participant to help evaluate a refund or dispute. Personal information is handled as described in the OpenMerchant Privacy Policy.

If you are an OpenMerchant merchant

The 2% Agent Transaction Fee

Unless your Order Form states a different rate, OpenMerchant charges a fee equal to 2% of the Gross Transaction Amount for an agent-initiated transaction processed through a merchant-authorized OpenMerchant API, endpoint, or checkout integration and successfully captured, with records linking the integration to the payment. A catalog view, referral, or prior impression alone does not make an unrelated payment billable. The Gross Transaction Amount is the amount actually captured, including taxes, shipping, service charges, and other included amounts, unless your Order Form excludes a component. The same capture is not billed twice because of retries, partial-capture reporting, or duplicate events.

OpenMerchant does not charge the Transaction Fee for a payment that is declined, canceled, voided, or never captured.

Shopper refunds do not reverse the OpenMerchant Transaction Fee

The OpenMerchant Transaction Fee is earned when an eligible agent transaction is successfully captured. If you later issue the shopper a full or partial refund, the OpenMerchant Transaction Fee remains payable and is not refunded or credited.

The same rule applies if the transaction later results in a dispute, chargeback, reversal, shopper complaint, non-fulfillment, or failure to achieve an expected result. You remain responsible for the underlying shopper refund, dispute, chargeback, or reversal.

If the Transaction Fee was collected as a Stripe application fee, Stripe does not automatically return it with a shopper refund. Under this policy, OpenMerchant will not issue or direct an application-fee refund solely because you refunded the shopper or the transaction was disputed.

OpenMerchant will issue an appropriate credit only if it confirms that the fee resulted from OpenMerchant’s own technical, duplication, attribution, calculation, or billing error. Any credit is limited to the amount incorrectly charged. An error by the merchant, shopper, agent surface, or payment provider is not an OpenMerchant error merely because it affects the transaction.

The merchant bears the retained fee—not the shopper. If a shopper is owed a full refund of a US$100 purchase, the shopper receives US$100 even though OpenMerchant keeps its US$2 fee. The merchant also remains responsible for any applicable payment-provider fees. Retaining OpenMerchant's fee is not grounds to reduce or refuse the shopper's refund.

This fee rule does not eliminate remedies required by law or binding payment-provider or network rules, excuse OpenMerchant's own breach, or limit liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

Discovery and optimization services

OpenMerchant currently does not charge separately for catalog publication, discovery, impressions, or discovery and conversion reporting. Viewing an impression report or using these features does not create a discovery fee. The 2% transaction fee described above still applies to eligible captured agent transactions.

Any future separately charged discovery or optimization service requires your affirmative acceptance of its description, price, currency, billing unit, payment timing, and cancellation terms before charging begins. We will not bill previously unbilled discovery activity retroactively or treat continued use of free discovery features as acceptance of new charges.

How to question a fee

Email support@openmerchant.dev within 30 days after the applicable report or invoice. Include your account name, invoice or event identifier, amount, and the reason you believe the event is duplicate, invalid, or incorrectly measured. OpenMerchant will investigate in good faith and credit confirmed errors. This period does not waive rights that cannot legally be waived.

OpenMerchant will acknowledge a billing question within two business days and ordinarily provide a decision or substantive status update within five business days. A confirmed overcharge will be corrected by a fee refund or invoice credit, ordinarily within ten business days after confirmation. If your account is closed or the credit cannot reasonably be used, we will return the overcharge to the original payment method where possible rather than require future purchases. Payment-provider and bank posting time is additional. You may ask support@openmerchant.dev to review a decision and provide supporting records.

How to stop future OpenMerchant fees

To stop future agent checkout activity, disable agent checkout or request closure of your OpenMerchant account through support@openmerchant.dev or available account controls. You can also pause catalog publication or discovery without closing your account. There are currently no separate discovery or impression charges. If the relevant control is unavailable, email support and specify what should stop.

For a dashboard action, the stop time is when the Service confirms the change. For an identifiable support request, it is when OpenMerchant receives the request, even if technical removal takes longer. We may reasonably verify authority to prevent an unauthorized closure, but do not bill for our processing delay after a valid request. We will confirm the affected services and stop time.

A valid agent transaction authorized and initiated before that time can still incur its transaction fee if later captured within the existing authorization; revoked authority cannot be used to initiate a new shopper charge. Previously earned fees remain payable.

Disconnecting Stripe alone does not necessarily stop discovery; disconnecting Google does not stop other integrations. Closing OpenMerchant does not itself delete your Google Merchant Center account, cancel a separately authorized Google Ads campaign, or cancel shopper orders or subscriptions. We stop new operations under revoked permissions and reasonably assist with account access and UCP key handoff. Third-party listings or public keys may require removal on systems you control. Their continued presence does not authorize OpenMerchant to continue using revoked permissions or create a discovery charge.

Contact

Shopper or merchant support and billing questions: support@openmerchant.dev
Legal questions: legal@openmerchant.dev

For full contractual terms, see the OpenMerchant Terms of Service.