Instant exchange offers customers a faster way to receive their exchanges so that they secure their desired items before it runs out of stock. In this instance, the exchange request is automatically approved, creating a new exchange order on Shopify immediately so that they can be fulfilled to your customers right away.

With instant exchange, customers will be prompted to enter their credit card details to make sure that you’ll receive the returns back at your warehouse. There are two ways on how you can get this set up.

(a) charge and refund later

(b) pre-authorise customers’ credit card.

Note that both options would require you to have your Stripe account connected to hold your customers’ credit card details.

In your PostCo dashboard, go to Return Settings > Exchange, and look for Instant Exchange. Toggle the button to enable the feature (as shown below).

With this option enabled, your customers will be immediately charged the value of the returning item(s) once their exchange request is submitted.

The customers will receive the refund of the value of their returning item(s) once you have received and proceed to resolve the requests in your PostCo dashboard. That way you can be certain that the customers would only be refunded for the value of the returning item(s) once you have received the returns back in a good condition.

With this option enabled, your customers’ credit card will be temporarily held once their exchange request is submitted. As soon as return items are in transit back to you, we’ll remove the hold. To make sure that your customers return the items on time, here are the two important pre-requisites.

Make sure you have a carrier account connected so that we are able to track when the shipment is in transit to you.

This window is the timeframe for your customers to ship out their return item(s) back to you before getting charged. As soon as the return shipment is marked as “in transit”, we will remove the hold from their card. Otherwise, if the return item(s) is shipped out outside the shipback window, customers will be charged for the full value of their return item(s).

Note: In any case when a charge occurs due to a late return outside the specified shipback window, you have the option to enable automatically refund the charged amount to automate the refund to your customers once you have received and resolved the return request.

The customer experience in the returns portal remains the same as a regular exchange but with instant exchange enabled, customers will be given the option to request for either an instant exchange or regular exchange (have their exchange order processed after they have returned the items) in the return summary page.

For customers who do not wish to enter their credit card details or are not interested in opting for an instant exchange, they have the option to proceed with regular exchange without having to input their credit card details.

Here’s how it would look like in the customer’s return portal if they were to opt in for instant exchange.

1. Must I connect my Stripe account to use instant exchange?

   Yes. With your Stripe account connected, you will be able to temporarily hold your customers’ payment automatically.

2. I don’t have a carrier account connected with PostCo, can I still use instant exchange?

   Yes, you can set it up with charge and refund later option as this doesn’t require to track shipment status.

Instant exchange is available as an add-on across all plans.