Offer Terms and Records Before a Financed Sale Goes Wrong

On a cash sale, your terms answer to one reader: the buyer. On a financed sale, a second reader appears. The provider that funds the deal keeps its own merchant terms, and those terms can shape what your refund and delivery words must say. For example, a provider may require a refund window that matches its own. So your offer terms should name the product, the price, the delivery date, and the refund path in plain words.

Write terms that survive a question months later. Then keep them versioned, so you can show which terms applied on the day of a sale. As a result, a vague argument turns into a documented fact instead of a memory contest.

This page is the canonical definition other guides point to, so here it is scoped tightly. Merchant of record means the seller of record: the entity that owns the sale and owes the customer the product and any refund. It is not the party that lent the money, and it is not the checkout tool. Instead, it is you, the business, when you sell under your own merchant account.

That distinction matters most when a refund is due. Because you own the sale, the refund obligation to the customer sits with you, even after a lender has funded the buy. The lender's own merchant terms then govern how that refund flows back through the financing. For recourse and consumer-default risk, see /products/compare, which owns that intent and goes deeper than this page does.

Who carries the loss in each scenario

Name the loss-bearer up front, and every later conversation gets simpler. The rule is not universal — it traces to the provider's own published merchant terms for that sale. State only what a named provider's own terms say, and cite that exact page; never carry one provider's posture over to another. For instance, Affirm's published merchant documentation describes its own funding and recourse posture, so rely on that page rather than a generalization.

A refund policy written after the request is a policy nobody agreed to. Put the refund terms where the buyer sees them at purchase. Then keep a copy of the exact wording that was live on that date. Because financing sits behind the sale, your refund wording should also explain that a refund on a financed order flows back through the provider under that provider's rules.

Cover these points in plain language:

• Window: how long a buyer has to ask for a refund.
• Condition: what state the product or service must be in.
• Method: how the refund is issued and where it lands.
• Financed refunds: how a refund reduces or clears the financed balance under the provider's terms.

Keep this wording out of the fine print. Above all, a refund clause the buyer can find is a refund clause you can enforce.

Records to keep on a financed sale are not exotic. They are the ordinary trail of a sale, captured on purpose and stored where you can find it. Because a provider funded the deal, that trail may also need to satisfy the provider's own documentation requests under its merchant terms.

Capture and retain the following on every financed sale:

• Order record: what was bought, the price, and the terms version in force.
• Delivery proof: tracking, timestamps, or access logs for digital goods.
• Buyer acknowledgment: any accepted terms, e-signature, or confirmation click.
• Communication log: messages that show what the buyer was told and when.

Store these together, tied to the order. As a result, a later question resolves in minutes, not days.

The provider decides the application, and you do not. So the checkout should make the provider's role visible before the buyer commits. In practice, this keeps consent and disclosures clean, and it matches how the financing actually works. For the mechanics of that checkout moment, see /platform/checkout.

Tell the buyer, in plain words at purchase:

• Who funds it: that a named financing provider is behind the plan.
• Whose terms apply: that the provider's terms govern the financing.
• What you still owe them: that you, the seller, remain responsible for delivery and refunds.

All financing is subject to credit approval. Availability of any provider depends on your industry, ticket size, and the applicant's outcome. In other words, not every provider is open to every merchant, and approved amounts and terms vary by applicant.

Treat this as a pre-launch checklist. Each item is cheap to set up and costly to skip. Set them up once, and every sale after inherits the discipline.

1. Offer terms, versioned: product, price, delivery, and refund path, dated and stored.
2. Refund policy, visible: the window, condition, and method shown at checkout.
3. Fulfilment records, captured: delivery proof filed against each order.
4. Provider disclosure, at purchase: the provider's role and terms shown before the buyer commits.

PayFull helps merchants offer financing inside their own checkout, under their own merchant accounts and provider agreements, so these records stay in your hands from the start. The provider owns the funding and the application, while you own the sale and the trail behind it. Get both straight before you sell, and a later dispute — handled in /platform/disputes — meets a clean record.