thread Why Don’t Customers Earn Loyalty Points When Paying with a Gift Card Linked to Their Profile? in Customer Engagement

Why Don’t Customers Earn Loyalty Points When Paying with a Gift Card Linked to Their Profile?

alexisjambon — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 10:58:44 GMT

Hi everyone,

We’ve noticed that when a gift card is issued to a customer (and customer appears as the owner of the GC in the Square Dashboard), purchases made with that card do not automatically earn loyalty points, even if the customer is enrolled in Square Loyalty. This is something our customers have repetedly complained about.

However, if the customer checks in on the POS (e.g., enters their phone number) when using the card, the gift card seems to get added under their “Linked Cards”, and loyalty points are awarded automatically on future uses.

A few questions:

Is this the expected behavior?
Can we automatically add a gift card to a customer’s loyalty account linked cards when it's issued?
If not, is there a way to manually add a gift card to a customer's loyalty account linked cards from the SquareUp Dashboard or via the Square API?

We’d love to streamline this for our customers buying gift cards for themselves or offering gift cards to loyalty enrolled customers. Thanks in advance for any guidance!

Re: Why Don’t Customers Earn Loyalty Points When Paying with a Gift Card Linked to Their Profile?

rtfulk — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 21:00:16 GMT

@alexisjambon Welcome to the community. The reason the gift card does not show up as linked when the customer uses it is, the card has never been used before.

For instance a customer comes into your store and uses the same card for several visits, that card gets linked to their account because they have used it several times and they would automatically get points, if they come in at another time and use a new card, they wouldn't get points because Square doesn't know to associate that card to the customer and you would have to link that new card for them to get points. That's the way a gift card works.

Here is a way to set it up. When a customer purchases a gift card you can link it at the time of the sale, by following the steps below.

On your Square POS

1. Go to Customers → select profile

2. In “Cards on File”, click Add Gift Card

3. Enter the gift card number to link

That will link the card for future purchases, it's an extra step, but it can be incorporated into the selling process of the gift card and save time when the customer wants to use it.

Re: Why Don’t Customers Earn Loyalty Points When Paying with a Gift Card Linked to Their Profile?

alexisjambon — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 21:46:43 GMT

Thank you for your answer @rtfulk !

Unfortunately adding the gift card in the "Payment on file" of a customer doesn't mean the customer will earn points on the next purchase. We've tested exactly that but it seems to be separate from the customer's loyalty account.

Example of a gift card added in "Payment on file" for a customer. Purchasing eligible items with that exact gift card doesn't associate the order with the customer and doesn't earn loyalty points.

From what we observed, only when the gift card is linked under "Loyalty Cards" will it automatically earn the customer points for every purchase.

And this is where my two questions come from:
1. Is it possible to automatically add a gift card in the "Loyalty Cards" of a customer?

2. If not, is it possible to manually add a gift card in the "Loyalty Cards" of a customer?

From the SquareUp dashboard, it is possible to find those cards in the customer profile under Loyatly > Manage > Manage Cards but from there it's only possible to unlink cards, not to add new ones.

Re: Why Don’t Customers Earn Loyalty Points When Paying with a Gift Card Linked to Their Profile?

rtfulk — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 22:20:50 GMT

I apologize, I thought by linking the gift card it would work. I did dig deeper researching and it seems there is no way to add it, because Square sees a gift card as a store credit. The only way I can figure out how to give them points is to manually add it. There is a way to link a gift card through Squares API, but I read over it and it doesn't mention anything about linking it would give you points. Below is the link if you would like to look at it.

Gift cards

Loyalty API

Manage Gift Cards