Process refunds smoothly and efficiently with CCAvenue Instant Gratification

Since our inception nearly two decades ago, CCAvenue has developed in-house a range of value-added services to meet the unique requirements of eCommerce businesses in India. CCAvenue Instant Gratification is one such proprietary solution designed to handle specific payment-related issues of businesses rendering real-time services, such as online bookings of flights, hotel accommodations and movie tickets. We have been extending our IG solution to cover all types of online transactions, including collection of fees chargeable by educational institutions and professional consultancy charges.

Let's assume Srinivas, a prospective customer, attempts to book a ticket online for a flight through the ABC Travels portal, a popular travel booking website. After providing all the required passenger and flight details such as the selected destination and time of departure, Srinivas gets redirected to the bank page on which he needs to provide essential payment information and authentication to complete the transaction using his preferred payment option. But there is a possibility here that even after he has been charged on the bank page, the transaction drops subsequently due to poor connectivity while getting redirected back to the payment gateway server. In such cases, the payment gateway provider is unable to communicate the status of the transaction to the merchant i.e. ABC Travels which, in turn, faces considerable difficulty in the processing of the refunds.

The Need for CCAvenue Instant Gratification
Nearly 3% of net banking and card transactions drop at the bank's page, without the status being communicated to the payment gateway. These transaction drops occur due to issues such as poor connectivity, session time-out or when the customer prematurely closes the browser window. Hence, the transaction status would be not known by either the payment gateway or the merchant. In such instances, these businesses would encounter difficulties in reconciling and processing refunds, and may even have to handle it manually.

CCAvenue Instant Gratification
Considering the above challenges faced by businesses involved in rendering real-time services, CCAvenue developed a unique Instant Gratification (IG) solution. If the transaction status was unknown to CCAvenue in real-time, then upon reconciliation with the corresponding banks, CCAvenue sends these IG transactions for auto reversal to the banks instead of updating them as successful to the merchant. Thus, the amount paid by customers for these transactions is reversed back to their accounts.

Types of Instant Gratification Options:

Normal IG
The normal IG setting is useful for regular instances when the customer's transaction was unsuccessful, but the amount has still been debited from the customer's bank account. The order is not received by the merchant, while the transaction status details are still pending with the acquiring or issuing banks. In such cases, the debited amount will be automatically refunded to the customer's account within 72 hours of initiating the transaction.

IG on the fly
Under this setting, the merchant can set the urgency parameters that will enable him to decide what should go for normal reconciliation (72 hours) and what should go for instant gratification. You can decide on the fly which transactions need to be considered for IG and which under non-IG parameters.

To see how this works, let's consider two customers booking separate tickets on this merchant's website on the same day. Nitin books a ticket in the morning for a Navratri event that is scheduled for Friday, while Hari books a ticket in the afternoon for a movie on Tuesday. If the refund is due to both customers, Hari's amount would be refunded first if the booking of movie tickets on the website had been configured as IG transactions and events booking as non-IG.

Time-based IG
Under this IG setting, the merchant can set the time till which he will accept orders on a particular day. The merchant will not accept the order after that specified time and the amount is refunded back to the customer.

CCAvenue's merchants can opt for the IG setting best suited for their type of business. Our Instant Gratification solution is an excellent value addition for businesses rendering real-time services as it streamlines the payment collection efforts and helps process refunds due to customers easily and effectively.

CCAvenue is an end-to-end PCI-DSS Compliant payment-processing solution provider, catering to nearly 3 million merchants across all payments businesses. With its path-breaking technology in the Fintech space, CCAvenue is committed to redefine user experience, improve transaction success rates and increase the earning potential of web merchants exponentially.

Our comprehensive platform offers business enhancement tools that provide unparalleled product differentiation and are meticulously designed to expand the customer reach of our web merchants, taking their online businesses to the next level.