We believe that bitcoin payments have the potential to change the way online payments work. But since bitcoin is a new technology, there can be a learning curve for some new users. That means shoppers can sometimes send the incorrect amount of bitcoin to a BitPay merchant – a case we call a "payment exception." Today we're sharing a feature we recently deployed to automate the handling of those exceptions.
Previously, a shopper who has overpaid or underpaid a BitPay invoice has had to contact the merchant to request a refund for the incorrect amount. While our dashboard payment exception tools, have simplified that process for our merchant users, it means that shoppers sometimes have to wait on a merchant's response in order to get their money back.
With today's release, shoppers paying merchants that have been using our new modal invoice can now request refunds for overpayments and underpayments directly to their bitcoin wallets from the BitPay invoice flow. Shoppers who underpay can retry their orders, and shoppers who overpay can get their funds back faster.
This new flow will lower the support burden for our merchants and make reclaiming mistaken payments easier and faster for their customers. Everyone wins, and our flow helps bitcoin users learn to avoid payment exceptions in the future.
Merchants who instead want to receive overpayments and underpayments (and then credit them to the customer) also have options. With the recent addition of automatic payment exception handling for our business and enterprise plans, most BitPay merchants can choose to accept overpayments and underpayments within certain thresholds set in their BitPay merchant dashboards.
BitPay merchants that want to test with the new BitPay modal invoice can check out our documentation and a quick demo of how it works. If you want to learn how to avoid common payment exceptions in your shopping, read our popular guide on making bitcoin payments.
If you have any feedback on this new feature, let us know! We're looking forward to learning from our users how we can help to make a better payment experience for bitcoin.
