Cloudbeds Billing Portal - Why my card was double-charged, then credited a few days later?

This article will discuss why some banks show three separate transactions for your single payment to Cloudbeds. When this occurs, your bank will show the following transactions:

1. An initial transaction that debits your account
2. A second transaction that debits your account
3. A third transaction that credits your account, canceling out the first transaction

Cloudbeds - Only one transaction

Using our payment processor's logs (we use Stripe), we can demonstrate that only one transaction was processed by Cloudbeds:

1. Payment Details show only one transaction

2. Logs show only one transaction

3. Events show only one transaction

Customer Bank First Transaction

In the example below, you will see the following:

1. Cloudbeds sent a single debit transaction of $85.00 to the associated credit card on December 24, 2016, at 21:17:32 (Pacific Time).
2. At the same time (06:17:32 CET), the transaction appears in the customer's bank account with the following data:
   • Amount: 84.57 Euros
   • Date: December 25, 2016
   • Time: 06:17:32 CET
   • Reference Number: 5531530163273033
3. One second later, at 21:17:33 Pacific, the payment was logged as successful.

Customer Bank Second Transaction

For this same payment, the customer's bank created a second transaction five days later with the following data:

1. Amount: 84.66 Euros
2. Date: December 29, 2016
3. Time: 16:06:16 CET

Customer Bank Third Transaction

Finally, we see the bank enacted a third transaction, in which the first transaction was credited (refunded) with the following data:

1. Amount: 84.57 Euros (same as transaction #1)
2. Date: January 3, 2017
3. Time: 18:05:44 ETC
4. Fecha Valor (Value Date): December 25, 2016 (the same as transaction #1)
5. Reason: return
6. Reference # is the same as Transaction #1: 5531530163273033

Conclusions

1. As we can see above, the first transaction, 5531530163273033, was initially debited to the customer's account on December 25, 2016, for 84.57 Euros.
2. The bank then debited the customer's account again on December 29, 2016, for 84.66 Euros.
3. The bank credited the customer's account with 84.57 on January 3, 2017, for the original transaction number 5531530163273033.

• The bank's currency is different from the Cloudbeds billing currency, and
• The card type used is Debit (not credit)

Recommendations

In order to avoid this situation, Cloudbeds recommends that you set the Cloudbeds billing currency to the same currency as your bank account currency.