Why we don't refund on your behalf

If LibrePay could send a refund to your buyer, that would mean LibrePay holds money that can be sent. And money that can be sent by us can be taken from you — by us, by an attacker who breaches us, or by a court that compels us. Refund power and seizure power are the same power. We refuse both.

So we built refunds the only honest way: the buyer requests, YOU decide, YOU send from YOUR wallet, YOU paste the transaction ID. The platform is a messenger and a bookkeeper — never a banker.

On a paid invoice the buyer gets a “Request a refund” panel. They describe the reason and optionally provide a fresh address (with an explicit warning about refunding exchange-deposit addresses). You get the request in your dashboard with the exact amount, destination and a QR code.

When you mark the refund complete with its txid, the buyer's page flips to “Refunded ✓” with a mempool.space link they can verify themselves. No tickets, no “5–10 business days”, no opaque middleman balance.

It costs you a few minutes per refund: open your wallet, send, paste. It saves you the thing no percentage-fee platform will ever say out loud: their refund automation is possible ONLY because they hold your settlement balance. Reserve freezes, compliance holds and “account under review” are features of custody, not bugs.

With LibrePay there is no balance to freeze. There is no account that can be “reviewed” into paralysis. Your revenue is in your wallet from the moment the buyer pays. A platform that cannot hold your money cannot withhold your money.

Don't take our word for it: every incoming payment and every refund is a direct, verifiable on-chain transaction between buyer and merchant. We publish the rails; the chain is the receipt. That is what non-custodial means — not a marketing word, but an architectural fact you can audit.