Platform guide
No-code marketplaces: where refund control disappears
No-code marketplaces trade control for speed — a good trade until refunds, where the control you surrendered includes whether transfers reverse. Platform vendors hold the configuration; outcomes land in your Stripe account either way. This guide covers the control spectrum, the five questions separating vendors who document behaviour from those who hedge, and outcome-level auditing that works even where configs stay opaque.
The control spectrum
Configurable: flags exposed in settings — rare, precious, documented. Fixed behaviour: vendor chose defaults; documentation varies from excellent to nonexistent. Opaque: refund internals undocumented entirely — common enough that outcome-auditing became standard practice among operators. Knowing which you bought determines everything downstream.
Five questions for vendor support
Do partial refunds pass reverse_transfer? Is refund_application_fee configurable per policy tier? Which staff surfaces issue real refunds versus credits? Are reversals logged anywhere we can export? What happens to transfers when we deactivate a vendor? Hedged answers are answers — note them, verify empirically later.
Auditing opaque platforms
Exports from the platform feed the paste-scanner; outcomes reveal what configurations conceal. Findings then ground support escalations in evidence rather than suspicion — vendors respond better to charge ids than vibes, and some genuinely fix behaviour once demonstrated.
Common questions
Vendor says "we handle it" — sufficient?
Ask for the exact parameters on partial refunds specifically. Precision here separates documentation from reassurance.
Can FeeGuard help when the platform is opaque?
Yes — detection reads outcomes from your Stripe account directly. Events do not lie even when settings are undocumented.