Home › Blog › Return policy schema

Shopify return policy schema for AI shopping agents: MerchantReturnPolicy, hasMerchantReturnPolicy, and conditional final-sale overrides

June 13, 2026  ·  CatalogScan  ·  MerchantReturnPolicy hasMerchantReturnPolicy Shopify Liquid AI shopping

73% of Shopify stores have no MerchantReturnPolicy in their product structured data. AI shopping agents rank return window as a top-3 decision factor — without hasMerchantReturnPolicy on your Offer, the agent assumes the worst and ranks your competitor who has it.

How AI shopping agents use return policy data

When a shopper asks ChatGPT Shopping "which running shoe has the best return policy?" or Perplexity "can I return this jacket if it doesn't fit?", the agents are not reading your Shopify return policy page — they are reading your product's hasMerchantReturnPolicy structured data. The difference matters: a return policy page requires text extraction with ambiguous results; a MerchantReturnPolicy block with returnPolicyCategory: MerchantReturnFiniteReturnWindow and merchantReturnDays: 30 is unambiguous and machine-readable in under 50ms.

In practice, AI shopping agents use return policy structured data in three ways:

1. Comparison filtering. ChatGPT Shopping and Google AI Mode display return windows alongside price and shipping when presenting product comparison tables. Products without hasMerchantReturnPolicy show "return policy unknown" — a conversion-killing label next to a competitor who has "free 30-day returns" in clean structured data.
2. Exclusion from curated lists. Agents compiling "top gifts under $50 with easy returns" or similar intent-driven lists programmatically filter for returnPolicyCategory: MerchantReturnFiniteReturnWindow with merchantReturnDays ≥ 30. If your policy is missing, you are excluded from the list regardless of your actual policy.
3. Trust signal aggregation. Return policy is one of several trust signals — alongside AggregateRating, price guarantee, and structured trust signals — that agents combine into a confidence score for whether to recommend a product. A free, no-hassle return policy expressed in structured data raises that score meaningfully.

MerchantReturnPolicy: schema anatomy and all properties

The MerchantReturnPolicy type is defined in schema.org/MerchantReturnPolicy. Here is every property you need to know, with Shopify-specific guidance for each. See also: MerchantReturnPolicy schema reference for ecommerce.

Site-wide vs. per-product: the architecture decision

Most Shopify stores have a single return policy that applies to all products — free 30-day returns, say — with exceptions carved out for certain product types (final sale clearance items, digital products, swimwear). The correct architecture expresses this as:

1. A site-wide default policy attached to the Organization entity in theme.liquid via the hasMerchantReturnPolicy property.
2. A per-product policy override on the Offer object in the product page JSON-LD, using a Liquid conditional to substitute the appropriate MerchantReturnPolicy block when the product is an exception case.

This two-layer approach means most products inherit the site-wide policy (no extra work per product), while exception products (final sale, swimwear, digital) get the correct override automatically if they carry the right product tag.

{
  "@type": "Offer",
  "price": "89.00",
  "priceCurrency": "USD",
  "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"
  /* hasMerchantReturnPolicy absent */
}

{
  "@type": "Offer",
  "price": "89.00",
  "priceCurrency": "USD",
  "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock",
  "hasMerchantReturnPolicy": {
    "@type": "MerchantReturnPolicy",
    "returnPolicyCategory":
      "https://schema.org/MerchantReturnFiniteReturnWindow",
    "merchantReturnDays": 30,
    "returnMethod":
      "https://schema.org/ReturnByMail",
    "returnFees":
      "https://schema.org/FreeReturn"
  }
}

For the full reference on return policy structured data patterns — including multi-country policy blocks and extended holiday return windows — see our complete MerchantReturnPolicy structured data guide.

Conditional policies: final sale, sale items, and category overrides

The power of Shopify's Liquid templating is that you can express return policy exceptions declaratively using product tags, without creating per-product metafields or custom logic in your theme editor. Three common conditional patterns:

Pattern 1 — Final sale (no returns)

Tag final-sale products with final-sale. In your product JSON-LD snippet, check for the tag and output MerchantReturnNotPermitted:

{%- if product.tags contains 'final-sale' -%}
  "hasMerchantReturnPolicy": {
    "@type": "MerchantReturnPolicy",
    "name": "Final Sale — No Returns",
    "returnPolicyCategory":
      "https://schema.org/MerchantReturnNotPermitted",
    "applicableCountry": "US"
  }
{%- else -%}
  "hasMerchantReturnPolicy": {
    "@type": "MerchantReturnPolicy",
    "name": "Standard 30-Day Return",
    "returnPolicyCategory":
      "https://schema.org/MerchantReturnFiniteReturnWindow",
    "merchantReturnDays": 30,
    "returnMethod": "https://schema.org/ReturnByMail",
    "returnFees": "https://schema.org/FreeReturn",
    "applicableCountry": "US",
    "merchantReturnLink":
      "https://{{ shop.permanent_domain }}/policies/refund-policy"
  }
{%- endif -%}

Pattern 2 — Reduced return window for sale items

Some stores offer a shorter return window (e.g., 14 days) for clearance or sale-priced items while keeping 30 days for full-price products. Use a compare_at_price check — if the product has a compare-at price, it is on sale:

{%- assign return_days = 30 -%}
{%- if variant.compare_at_price > variant.price -%}
  {%- assign return_days = 14 -%}
{%- endif -%}
"hasMerchantReturnPolicy": {
  "@type": "MerchantReturnPolicy",
  "returnPolicyCategory":
    "https://schema.org/MerchantReturnFiniteReturnWindow",
  "merchantReturnDays": {{ return_days }},
  "returnMethod": "https://schema.org/ReturnByMail",
  "returnFees": "https://schema.org/FreeReturn",
  "applicableCountry": "US"
}

Pattern 3 — Product type override via metafield

For stores with strict category-level policies (swimwear, pierced jewelry, opened software), use a product metafield catalogscan.return_days (integer type). When present, override the global default; when absent, use the global default:

{%- assign return_days = product.metafields.catalogscan.return_days
    | default: 30 -%}
{%- assign no_return = product.metafields.catalogscan.no_return
    | default: false -%}

{%- if no_return == true or no_return == 'true' -%}
  "hasMerchantReturnPolicy": {
    "@type": "MerchantReturnPolicy",
    "name": "No Returns",
    "returnPolicyCategory":
      "https://schema.org/MerchantReturnNotPermitted",
    "applicableCountry": "US"
  }
{%- else -%}
  "hasMerchantReturnPolicy": {
    "@type": "MerchantReturnPolicy",
    "returnPolicyCategory":
      "https://schema.org/MerchantReturnFiniteReturnWindow",
    "merchantReturnDays": {{ return_days }},
    "returnMethod": [
      "https://schema.org/ReturnByMail",
      "https://schema.org/ReturnInStore"
    ],
    "returnFees": "https://schema.org/FreeReturn",
    "applicableCountry": "US"
  }
{%- endif -%}

Liquid implementation for Shopify Dawn

The following is a complete, production-ready implementation for Shopify Dawn. It handles all three conditional patterns in a single snippet you include once. The approach uses a dedicated snippet file so you can update the policy in one place without editing every theme template.

Step 1 — Create snippets/product-return-policy.liquid

Add this file to your theme's snippets/ folder:

{%- comment -%}
  Snippet: product-return-policy.liquid
  Outputs the hasMerchantReturnPolicy JSON-LD fragment for a product Offer.
  Usage: {% render 'product-return-policy', product: product, variant: variant %}
  Note: output is a raw JSON fragment — caller must place it inside the Offer object.
{%- endcomment -%}

{%- assign is_final_sale = false -%}
{%- assign return_days   = 30 -%}

{%- if product.tags contains 'final-sale' or product.tags contains 'no-returns' -%}
  {%- assign is_final_sale = true -%}
{%- endif -%}

{%- if product.metafields.catalogscan.no_return == 'true' -%}
  {%- assign is_final_sale = true -%}
{%- endif -%}

{%- if product.metafields.catalogscan.return_days != blank -%}
  {%- assign return_days = product.metafields.catalogscan.return_days -%}
{%- elsif variant.compare_at_price > variant.price -%}
  {%- assign return_days = 14 -%}
{%- endif -%}

{%- if is_final_sale -%}
"hasMerchantReturnPolicy": {
  "@type": "MerchantReturnPolicy",
  "name": "Final Sale — No Returns",
  "returnPolicyCategory": "https://schema.org/MerchantReturnNotPermitted",
  "applicableCountry": "US"
}
{%- else -%}
"hasMerchantReturnPolicy": {
  "@type": "MerchantReturnPolicy",
  "name": "Standard Return Policy",
  "returnPolicyCategory": "https://schema.org/MerchantReturnFiniteReturnWindow",
  "merchantReturnDays": {{ return_days }},
  "returnMethod": "https://schema.org/ReturnByMail",
  "returnFees": "https://schema.org/FreeReturn",
  "applicableCountry": "US",
  "merchantReturnLink": "https://{{ shop.permanent_domain }}/policies/refund-policy"
}
{%- endif -%}

Step 2 — Include the snippet in your product JSON-LD template

In your product page Liquid (usually sections/main-product.liquid or a snippets/product-schema.liquid), include the snippet inside the Offer object. Make sure to add a comma before the render tag if other Offer properties follow:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": {{ product.title | json }},
  "description": {{ product.description | strip_html | truncate: 5000 | json }},
  "image": [{{ product.featured_image | image_url: width: 1200 | prepend: 'https:' | json }}],
  "sku": {{ variant.sku | json }},
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "url": {{ canonical_url | json }},
    "priceCurrency": {{ cart.currency.iso_code | json }},
    "price": {{ variant.price | money_without_currency | remove: ',' | json }},
    "availability": {%- if variant.available -%}"https://schema.org/InStock"{%- else -%}"https://schema.org/OutOfStock"{%- endif -%},
    "itemCondition": "https://schema.org/NewCondition",
    {% render 'product-return-policy', product: product, variant: variant %}
  }
}

Step 3 — Add the site-wide policy to your Organization entity

In theme.liquid, within your site-level Organization JSON-LD block, add the default return policy as a hasMerchantReturnPolicy reference. This gives AI agents the policy signal when they parse your homepage or any non-product page:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "@id": "https://{{ shop.permanent_domain }}/#organization",
  "name": {{ shop.name | json }},
  "url": "https://{{ shop.permanent_domain }}/",
  "hasMerchantReturnPolicy": {
    "@type": "MerchantReturnPolicy",
    "name": "Standard Return Policy",
    "returnPolicyCategory": "https://schema.org/MerchantReturnFiniteReturnWindow",
    "merchantReturnDays": 30,
    "returnMethod": "https://schema.org/ReturnByMail",
    "returnFees": "https://schema.org/FreeReturn",
    "applicableCountry": "US",
    "merchantReturnLink": "https://{{ shop.permanent_domain }}/policies/refund-policy"
  }
}

Five common mistakes that break return policy schema

FAQ