How to sell gift cards and accept them at checkout

In TeleportHQ, you sell gift cards by switching on Gift Cards in E-Commerce Settings and marking a product with This product is a gift card. When a shopper buys it and the order is paid, your store creates a gift card worth the price paid and emails its code to the buyer. Shoppers spend the card at checkout under Have a gift card?, and you can issue, disable or top up cards yourself from Manage Gift Cards.

Before you start#

• Your project needs an online store. See How to add a store to an existing project.
• To email codes to buyers, your project needs an email sending service. See Which emails does the store send to you and your customers?.
• Gift cards come with every TeleportHQ store. They need no extra plan.

Steps#

1. Turn on gift cards#

1. In the left sidebar, click E-commerce. If you don't see it, click Plugins, then E-commerce, then Open next to E-commerce panel.
2. At the top right of the E-Commerce panel, click the gear (E-Commerce Settings). The E-Commerce Setup panel opens.
3. Scroll to Gift Cards and switch it on. TeleportHQ sets them up, which takes a moment, then says "Gift cards are on. Mark a product as a gift card to sell them, or issue one from Manage Gift Cards."

2. Sell a gift card#

1. In the E-Commerce panel, next to Products, click + (Add Product). The product form opens.
2. Fill in Product Name and Price, for example Gift card and 25.
3. Switch on This product is a gift card. The hint reads "Buying it issues a gift card worth the price paid, per unit, once the order is paid. A gift card never gets a discount and cannot be paid for with one."

4. Click Create Product.
5. Publish your site.

To sell several amounts, create one gift-card product per amount, for example 25, 50 and 100. If Gift Cards is still off when you save a gift-card product, saving turns it on.

3. Manage your cards#

1. In the E-Commerce Setup panel, on the Gift Cards block, click Manage Gift Cards. The Gift Cards panel lists every card. Search by recipient, buyer or the last four characters of a code.

2. Click a card to open it. You see its Balance, Face value, Recipient, Expires, how it was Issued, and its Ledger (every time money was added or spent). Copy code copies the full code.
3. To stop a card from being used, click Disable card. Enable card turns it back on.
4. To change a balance, click Adjust balance, choose Add to balance or Take off balance, type the amount and a Reason, then click Apply adjustment. The reason is kept on the card's ledger.

4. Issue a card by hand#

Give a card as a gift or a goodwill gesture, without an order:

1. At the top of the Gift Cards panel, click + (Issue a card). In an empty list, click Issue a card in the middle.
2. In Amount, type the value, for example 25. It's in your store's currency.
3. Optional: fill in Recipient email (optional), Recipient name (optional), Message (optional), Expires (optional) and Internal note (optional). "No email is sent": these details only help you find the card again.

4. Click Issue card. The message "Gift card ••••NPQR has been issued." appears and the card opens.
5. Click Copy code and send the code to the person yourself.

What shoppers see#

• Buying a card. Each gift card bought creates one card per unit, worth what the buyer paid for it. Once the order is paid, the buyer gets the email "Your gift card for order ORD-1024", with each card's code, value and expiry. Bought cards never expire. The codes also show in the Gift cards card of the order page, and on the shopper's account page under Gift cards. An order of only gift cards has nothing to ship.
• Paying with a card. At checkout, under Have a gift card?, the shopper types the code (16 letters and digits, such as ABCD-EFGH-JKLM-NPQR) and clicks Apply. The card's balance comes off the total, and the shopper pays the rest as usual. Whatever is left stays on the card for a later order.

Check that it worked#

• The Gift Cards panel lists the cards you issued, and the cards your shoppers bought once their orders are paid.
• On your published store, the checkout shows Have a gift card?.
• Your site's admin panel lists every card under COMMERCE → Promotions → Gift Cards. See What is the admin panel?.

Troubleshooting#

The Gift Cards panel says "Your checkout page was built before gift cards existed, so customers cannot redeem one yet." Click Recreate checkout page, then publish.

"Gift cards need a connected database. Enable e-commerce first." Your store's database is missing. Check that it's still connected in Data Sources, then switch Gift Cards on again.

What shoppers can see at checkout

• "That gift card code is not valid." The code doesn't exist. They check it for typos.
• "That gift card is no longer active." You disabled the card.
• "That gift card has expired." or "That gift card has no balance left." The card can't pay any more.
• "That gift card is in a different currency than your cart." A card pays only in the currency it was issued in.
• "A gift card cannot be used to pay for another gift card." The cart holds a gift card.
• "This subscription starts with a free trial, so there is no first payment for a gift card to cover."

Good to know#

• Refunds as store credit. When you refund an order, you can pay the money back onto the gift card the shopper used (Credit gift card ••••NPQR), or onto a new card that's emailed to them (Issue a new gift card to …). See How to refund an order.
• Turning gift cards off keeps every card and its balance, and the checkout stops accepting them. If you still sell gift-card products, the Turn off gift cards window first warns that they'll be set to Inactive. Switching gift cards back on doesn't reactivate them: set them back to Active from the Products tab.
• No discounts on gift cards. Discount codes and automatic discounts never lower a gift card's price.
• A gift card can't be digital or recurring. Each product is one kind: a gift card, a digital product or a subscription.
• Invoices. An order a gift card pays in full is invoiced like any paid order, when Auto-generate on payment is on. See How to set up invoices and VAT for your store.