How do I request to be paid back for a purchase?

Using our Request payback feature, a cardholder can ask the Primary Accountholder, Approver, or a sibling on their account, to pay them back for a purchase they made with their Greenlight card.

This is great at times like when one sibling covers a movie ticket for the other! The family member that is sent the request will see a notification for the request in their Greenlight app, and will be able to approve it at any time to pay back what is owed. Money will never move automatically so nothing is sent until the person being asked approves the request.

Primary Accountholders can also send money back without being asked. See How do I pay my child (or older adult) back for a purchase? to learn how Pay back works.

Requesting a Payback

How do I send a request to be paid back?

Cardholders can follow the steps below from their Greenlight app to request that another family member pay them back for a purchase they made.

1. Open the Greenlight app and tap your “Accounts” dashboard
2. Tap “Spending”
3. Scroll down to your “Recent activity” and tap the transaction you’d like to be paid back for. These requests can be sent for pending or posted purchases
4. Tap “Request payback”
5. Choose the amount you need to be paid back for from the tile amounts
6. Under “From”, choose the family member you’re asking to pay you back
7. Under “To”, choose where you’d like the money to land in your account
   • A note with details about the request is added for you automatically but you can edit it to add more context as needed!
8. Tap “Request”

You’ll see “Your request has been sent,” and the transaction will show that you’ve asked to be paid back, along with the status of your request.

How do I check on or cancel a pending payback request?

1. From your transaction history in your Greenlight app, tap on the transaction that you requested a payback for
2. Your purchase will show a message such as “You asked Dad to pay you back $12.00 for this transaction” with a “Pending” status
   • The request itself also appears in your activity as a pending transfer so you can tap it to see the details
3. To cancel your request, tap “Cancel Request” 
   • A request can be cancelled any time before it’s approved or declined

Approving or declining a request

When a cardholder sends a request, the family member receiving the request will get a push notification to their device, and the request will appear under their Notifications on the Greenlight home screen! To approve or decline a request:

1.     Tap the notification, or open the pending request on your home screen

2.     Review the details to see who is requesting, the amount, the original purchase, and where the money will land in their account

3.     Add a note if you’d like (optional)

4.     Tap “Approve” to send the money instantly. The cardholder will get a “Payback request approved” notification, and the original purchase updates to show that you paid them back

5.     Or, tap “Decline” if you don’t want to pay it back. No money moves, the request is marked Declined along with any note you added, and the cardholder will be notified

Good to know: You can also approve or decline right from the notification tile on your home screen using the check (approve) and X (decline) buttons.

Can I see when my children send or request money from each other?

Absolutely! Primaries and Approvers can always see sibling-to-sibling paybacks right in the app. Both the payback requests and the resulting transfers appear in each child’s transaction history, showing who requested it, who paid it, and any notes attached to it.