Abstract: A method by which a merchant can establish and advantageously use an account at an online payment service provider for making both payments and refunds to customers so as to minimize overdraft or non-sufficient funds (NSF) occurrences and the attendant delays and loss of customer good will includes providing at least one processor communicating through at least one network, and using the at least one processor and network to receive a refund request, access a user reserve account with an online payment service provider, wherein the reserve account is associated with a regular account of the user with the payment service provider, and processing the refund request from the reserve account.