Refunds

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Overview

Gateway is non-custodial. Swaps are atomic and secured by an on-chain Bitcoin Light Client, so a solver can never take a user’s funds without delivering the other side of the swap. If a swap can’t be completed, the user gets their funds back. BTC-to-X refunds are processed by BOB automatically; the only case requiring user action — an X-to-BTC order where the Bitcoin payout never happened — is a very rare edge case. Users can always check their order — including refund status — on the Gateway Explorer order page, so you don’t need to build refund status UI.

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What happens at a glance

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BTC to X refunds

There are two cases where a BTC-to-X swap returns funds instead of the expected output:

1. The swap can’t fill at the quoted terms. While waiting for the Bitcoin transaction to confirm, prices can drift until the destination route no longer accepts the submitted amount. When this happens, Gateway refunds the user in USDT on Ethereum, automatically — no action needed from the user or the integrator.
2. A DeFi action fails. When a swap includes a strategy or DeFi action — staking, lending, a multicall — and that on-chain action reverts, Gateway falls back to delivering wrapped BTC directly to the user’s EVM address rather than failing the whole swap. The user still receives value; they just receive wrapped BTC instead of the intended position.

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X to BTC refunds

X-to-BTC refunds are a very rare edge case: the token swap settles before the Bitcoin payout is made, so a refund only comes into play if the payout never happens (for example, a solver going offline). Often a slow payout isn’t a refund case at all — it just needs a Bitcoin fee bump, which the gateway handles internally. If the payout genuinely can’t complete, the user’s locked wrapped BTC becomes reclaimable. A security delay applies before funds can be withdrawn — this ensures a Bitcoin payment that was already made can’t be refunded twice. After the delay: For users on the BOB Gateway UI — the order appears in the activity section (sidebar) with a withdraw option. One click, sign the transaction, funds returned. No integrator involvement needed. For integrators — your users’ orders expose the same reclaim as a refundTx in the order status (see below). You can submit it on the user’s behalf, surface a withdraw button in your own UI, or simply direct users to the BOB Gateway app where they can self-serve.

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Do integrators need to build refund handling?

Mostly no. BTC-to-X refunds are fully automatic, and for the rare X-to-BTC case, users can self-serve in the BOB Gateway UI — or you can handle it via refundTx. Optionally, surface refund status in your app using the API fields below — for example to show “refunded” in an order history.

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Refund status in the API

A completed refund shows up as the refunded order status, which lists the refundedTokens actually returned (each with chain, token, amount, and the settlement txHash). While an order is still in progress or has failed, a refundTx may be available to trigger the reclaim:

• status.inProgress.refundTx — refund available on an in-progress order
• status.failed.refundTx — refund available on a failed order
• status.refunded.refundedTokens — the completed refund

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Issuing a refund manually

When a refundTx is present, it can be submitted as a normal EVM transaction to reclaim the locked assets. Step-by-step code:

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Next Steps