Why does a credit to a cardholder’s account take so long to post?

At Elavon, the credit is processed and submitted to the bank along with the settlement.
Per Visa and MasterCard Regulations, the Bank has up to 30 days to apply a credit/refund to their cardholder’s account. This is not something that we can control.
We suggest that the cardholder “dispute” the charges in question with the card issuer. The card issuer will then issue a temporary credit to the customer’s account until the department’s credit has been applied. Cardholder dispute instructions are printed on each monthly Payment Card statement. (Fair Credit Billing Act [1974]; (See "What is a cardholder dispute")