Refund or cancel a purchase

This guide explains how to revoke access to a digital asset after a business event on the vendor side, such as a refund, dispute, or manual cancellation.

HL Connector does not process customer payments. All payment handling, refunds, and disputes are fully managed by the vendor. HL Connector is only responsible for granting or revoking access to digital assets.

When to cancel a purchase

You should cancel a purchase in HL Connector when access to an asset must be revoked, for example:

A customer refund was issued on the vendor side
A payment dispute or chargeback occurred
An order was canceled manually by the vendor
Access needs to be revoked due to a business or legal reason

Canceling a purchase updates the order state and immediately revokes access to the associated assets.

Important behavior

Only the vendor can initiate a cancellation
Payments are never validated or reversed by HL Connector
Cancellation affects access only, not financial records
Canceled orders cannot be restored

Client API Token

Step 1 — Identify the order

To cancel a purchase, you need the vendor order identifier that was returned when the purchase was registered.

If you do not have the order details, retrieve them first using the order info endpoint.

This allows you to confirm the current order status before attempting cancellation.

Step 2 — Cancel the purchase

Once you have confirmed that the order should be canceled, call the cancellation endpoint.

This request notifies HL Connector that access to the asset must be revoked.

What happens

The order state is updated to CANCELED
All access URLs become invalid
The asset can no longer be downloaded or viewed

If the order is not eligible for cancellation, the API returns a validation error.

Order state after cancellation

Status	Description
`CANCELED`	Access was revoked by the vendor

Once an order reaches CANCELED, it is considered a terminal state.

Common integration pattern

A typical cancellation flow looks like this:

sequenceDiagram
    participant Vendor
    participant HL as HL Connector

    Vendor->>Vendor: Process refund or dispute
    Vendor->>HL: DELETE /purchase/cancel
    HL-->>Vendor: 201 OK

Error handling

The cancellation endpoint uses standard HTTP status codes:

401 — missing or invalid access token
404 — order or asset not found
422 — order cannot be canceled in its current state
5xx — internal processing error

Errors are returned in a structured JSON format and are safe to log or display.

Summary

Handle refunds and disputes entirely on your side
Use HL Connector only to manage access revocation
Cancel purchases when access must be removed
Treat CANCELED as a final order state

This separation of responsibilities keeps your payment flow independent while ensuring correct access control for digital assets.