Hi @Leousa. I’m going to have to give you two answers to this question.
Answer 1 - I would not recommend doing this as you described above. First, when you refund money on a customer transaction Square — like every other card processor — does not refund the processing fee. So, if you refund $5,000 that’s going to be approximately $150 that you are losing every time. Second, it sounds like you would be processing LOTS of refunds. This is a red flag to Square and to card issuing companies (Mastercard, etc) that will cause you to get lots of scrutiny and even possible to lose your card processing rights. High refund rates = high risk sellers as far as they are concerned.
Answer 2 - currently there is no Square mechanism for accepting deposits with a pre-auth and then either letting that pre-auto expire or charging only part of it. The only way I know to do this and stay with Square until they do offer this feature (if they ever do) is to set up something like a Stripe account and process your deposit portion of the transaction using that platform, and the normal rental part of the transaction on Square. Stripe will drop the pre-authorization after a certain number of days if you don’t confirm it. And, if you need to charge the customer something for damage against their deposit, you can confirm that portion on Stripe and get paid by them for it.
I’m sure that if Square has something in the works that might go into beta test soon for deposits they will chime in here. But I wouldn’t count on that right now.
If you have questions, let me know.
Chip A.
Square Expert & Innovator and member of the Square Champions group. (But NOT a Square employee, just a seller like you)
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