# Refunds & recovery

Pay from enrolled funds and recover eligible shortfalls without reversing payment.

Cleard provider API · 1.4.0 · Base Sepolia test USDC.

## Execute the approved refund

POST /programs/{program}/purchases/{id}/refunds uses the designated reviewer’s stored decision, the existing BLISK guard and exact execution constraints. It records the approved award and attempts collection from the accepted funding source: available reserve or the merchant wallet under its signed mandate and token allowance. approved, paid and outstanding remain separate. Unavailable funds or allowance can leave an approved balance unpaid.

## Retry eligible collection

In reserve mode, a new eligible pay call applies its recovery budget to the oldest approved debt, then rolling reserve, before merchant proceeds. Recovery and rolling capture share the payment’s gross/cumulative collection limits, so funds are not double allocated. No fresh reviewer or merchant approval is required for already approved debt. In direct-wallet mode, retry /refunds explicitly under the existing mandate, allowance, caps and deadlines; external wallet inflows do not trigger collection. Read and reconcile receipts before claiming payment.

## Signed HTTP notifications

POST /programs/{program}/notifications dispatches up to five due events from that program per call, with at most eight dispatch attempts per event. The fixed receiver at https://sandbox.cleard.ai/v1/routing/notification-receiver accepts at most sixteen verified deliveries per event ID, including duplicates. GET /notification-receipts exposes that receiver count. For a retry test, pass {probe_first_attempt: true}; the receiver returns 503 once per event. Delivery requires caller-driven retries; no scheduler or external receiver is enabled.

## Supported collection sources

Reserve mode uses explicit deposits and agreed withholding from routed payments. Direct-wallet mode requires both an explicit bounded signed funding mandate and USDC allowance to the pinned V4 contract. Risk tier alone grants no authority. Provider-managed balances, including PayPal-held balances, and payout holds are separate unsupported sources. Recovery is not guaranteed.

[Funding and deadline details](https://cleard.ai/docs/routed-checkout.md): Authoritative policy, obligation and exit semantics.

[Routing OpenAPI](https://cleard.ai/docs/routing-openapi.json): Refund, notification and snapshot schemas.