Gift Card Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Gift Cards

[Tom]

👋 Hello Seller Community!

With the holiday season in the rearview mirror, our Square Gift Cards joined our forums to address all of your post-holiday gift card questions. Thank you to everyone who participated and stay tuned for a recap of the main themes that were brought up!

A few example questions:

• Gift Cards were a large portion of my sales during this holiday season, what are the best practices for managing redemptions?
• I'm new to Square, what do I need to know to get started with Gift Cards?
• If I could do "_______" with Square Gift Cards, it would make a big difference for my business.

[lornaz]

Hi @beekings! Thank you for your questions!

1. Unfortunately right now buyers can only redeem one gift card at a time on Square Online. We definitely understand this is frustrating for buyers and will work with our Square Online team to prioritize updating this functionality.
2. Yes! Customers can reload their gift cards online. See our seller community post for more information.
3. Last year, we released our Gift Cards API into a public beta so that anyone can integrate with and accept Square gift cards. If there’s a particular ecommerce system you are interested in, I would suggest reaching out to them to see if they have integrated with our Gift Cards API.

[repopgifts]

We would love to see gift cards as a supported payment option for WooCommerce plug-ins.

The custom gift cards for square are considerably more expensive than other custom cards from the same vendor that can be used on other platforms. 

When you "reset" the balance on a gift card it does not clear the card being linked to customer information, for example the loyalty program, so reusing them is a challenge in that aspect. We'd love to have the reset also reset any customer info linked to them.

[lornaz]

Hello! Thank you for the feedback

1. We would love to see that too :). We recently released our Gift Cards API into a public beta so that anyone can integrate with and accept Square gift cards. It would be up to WooCommerce to build this integration. We recommend reaching out to WooCommerce too to let them know you’d like your customers to be able to use Square eGift Cards on your site!
2. Thank you for the feedback on pricing. Our gift cards are priced this way so that we can continue to allow Square sellers to run gift card programs with no additional fees besides the cost of the cards themselves. Other credit card processors, and gift card software programs will charge additional "setup fees" or monthly subscription fees on top of buying the cards just to let you use them. So while paying for the gift cards up front may be a stretch, there are no additional fees to offer gift cards and you can stop offering gift cards or reorder them at any time. To cut down costs, you can also reuse individual gift cards from one customer to the next or encourage customers to buy free, digital eGift Cards instead of plastic ones. 
3. Thank you for the feedback and example here. We want to make it as easy as possible to reset and reuse your gift cards so we’ll look into this and see if we can prioritize fixing this.

[MALqueerhair]

I offer eGift Cards for Appointments (haircut & color services). I would like to send an onboarding email for new eGift Card Recipients with helpful links about the studio & to book an appointment. Is there a way to set that up using Square Marketing?

[lornaz]

Hi @MALqueerhair! Thank you for the question. That’s a great idea! Unfortunately, there isn’t to automate this with Square Marketing right now. One option to help get this information to recipients is to create a webpage with these instructions and link them in your custom policy section for gift cards. That way, the information will get sent with all eGift Cards that are delivered.

[jepea]

i was wondering when my business receives payment for square gift cards: when the card is purchased by a customer, or when it is used? 

[keicollective]

You get the funds from Square when the customer purchases the card.

Items purchased with gift cards will still show up in sales reports at the time the card is used, the payment type will just say 'gift card' so you know why you aren't getting funds for those sales. 

[Wendyct]

Hi @jepea! You'll receive the funds from the sale of a gift card right when it is loaded and sold, according to your transfer schedule. You won’t receive a second transfer after the customer redeems the gift card, as it’s deducting prepaid credit that was paid when the gift card was purchased.

[echocl]

I would like to be able to generate and issue a gift code to customers, rather than a discount or coupon code.

[Wendyct]

Hey @echocl! If you are set up to offer eGift Cards and you want to give your customers a free eGift Card (or gift code) as a promo, you can sell it to them using a 100% discount from your Point of Sale app.

To start, you will need to set up a special 100% off discount from your Point of Sale app or online Dashboard.  

Once you have your discount set up, to load and send free eGift Cards in the Square Point of Sale app:

1. Create a new sale or open an existing ticket.
2. Tap Library > Gift Cards > Sell eGift Card.
3. Select your eGift Card design.
4. Select a preset load amount or enter a custom amount.
5. Enter the eGift Card recipient's email address > tap Done.
6. Tap Return to Sale to complete the transaction.
7. Tap Review Sale or Current Sale - depending on the device you are using.
8. Tap the gift card item and apply the 100% discount 
9. Save and complete the sale. 

Once the transaction is complete, the recipient will immediately be sent their eGift Card via email.

[jasmineradi]

Hello, I'm Jasmine! I own a small massage therapy business in Fargo, North Dakota. As you can imagine, massage is an amazing gift and so we end up selling a ton of e-gift cards. 

I would like to see improvement in how gift cards are redeemed. I have had to create a workaround for this problem that I will explain below for the past year and a half and think there would be a really simple solution to make our lives easier. 

I run into the issue of clients coming in with a printed receipt for their e-gift card but it does not provide the e-gift card code. It would be so nice if we could simply login to the dashboard and be able to pull up the e-gift card code. This isn't currently an option.

The only work-around I have found is re-sending the e-gift card to my work e-mail and then grabbing the code from there. It takes a few steps but I would love to eliminate this work-around by just being able to access the e-gift card code right from the dashboard.

[keicollective]

I've always wondered why the gift card's info isn't included on the end of the receipt? Similar to how big box stores add a gift card activation receipt to the end of your regular checkout info (usually even comes detached so you can give it with the gift card). That would help cover folks who bring the receipt instead of the e-gift card print out. 

[lornaz]

Thank you for the feedback and suggestion! Most of our receipts are digital so they don’t always have the option to detach but we definitely understand the desire to have the gift card information in multiple places in case customers misplace the gift card. I will make a note of this request for future consideration and discuss with the team.

[Wendyct]

Hey Jasmine! Thank you so much for letting us know about your process for redeeming eGift cards when your customer comes in without the redemption number. Re-sending yourself the eGift Card is one way to get the number, but it may be easier to just search for the gift card recipient by email address in your Customer Directory and charge their gift card on file. To add your customer/gift card recipient to a sale:

1. Add items to your cart or enter a custom amount.
2. Tap Charge > Card on File.
3. Search for the customer by email or name> tap Charge to select their associated eGift Card to be used as payment for the transaction.
4. Complete the payment flow.

If there are insufficient funds on the gift card, you can use Split Tender to complete the sale.

[keicollective]

In store, we sell e-gift cards through the Square Register, so customers can type in their own email address. Is there any plan to add validation to the email field for customers? We've had a few folks type .con or similar typos and it's not an easy fix to re-issue the card while at the register. 

[lornaz]

Hello @keicollective! This is a great suggestion! We don’t currently have concrete plans to add email validation to this screen but can look into it and see if this is something we can prioritize. For now, you can resend eGift Cards (and edit the recipient email) from your dashboard. Another alternative, if your buyer realizes their mistake while still at the register, you can clear the balance of the gift card and issue another new gift card from the Register.

[cbarch]

Hello 

I designed and ordered custom physical gift cards in November. 

I would like to reorder.. I can't seem to figure out how to re-order. 

Do I have to resubmit my custom artwork again? 

Thank you for your help?

[Wendyct]

Hi @cbarch! The ability to repeat past gift card orders from your Square Dashboard is not currently available, but you can always call eCard Systems, Square's gift card printer, directly to reorder at 1-866-776-7409 or email them at [email protected]. They will have a record of your past order and the design you used. You should be able to set up the reorder with them.

[lornaz]

Hello Everyone,

Thanks again for taking the time to share your questions and feedback!

We hope your questions were answered—the experiences you've shared will help us as we iterate going forward.

As we close out this event, we wanted to do a recap on three themes that came up frequently:

Lost gift cards are painful for both our sellers and customers. We have a couple of solutions to help with this:

• Adding a Gift Card as Card on File to your customer’s Directory Profile means that your customers can still redeem gift cards, even if they’ve lost the physical card. 
• You can also look up a gift card in Dashboard based on when the gift card was purchased. From the Square Dashboard, you can then clear the balance of the lost gift card so that the lost gift card cannot be redeemed in the future.

Online redemption is key. 

• Square gift cards should work seamlessly across all of your Square products, including the Appointments booking site and the ability to redeem multiple gift cards on Square Online. We will work with these teams to try and prioritize adding this functionality.

• For non-Square ecommerce sites, we released our Gift Cards API into a public beta last year so that anyone can integrate with and accept Square gift cards. If there’s a particular ecommerce system you are interested in, please reach out to them to encourage them to integrate with our Gift Cards API. 

Using barcodes and QR codes to speed up redemption. 

• Square gift cards are now easier to redeem than ever. New gift cards ordered through Square include barcodes and QR codes on the back that you can scan at checkout using your front facing camera or attached barcode scanner. You can also use your scanner to load the cards on iOS devices and as an added bonus, your customers can check their gift card balance themselves by scanning the QR code with the camera on the mobile device.
• Updates to eGift Cards to include QR + barcodes coming soon. 

We appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences and we'll continue to improve Square Gift Cards based on your business needs.   

Again, thanks for your participation. For the latest updates, feel free to subscribe to the Product Updates board.

[Mattsims458]

How much would you charge for a plastic gift card and if some one purchase a plastic giftcard and pays cash would the funds come from my bank account and if they pay by credit card would that come from the balance in my square account

[jasmineradi]

When e-gift cards are purchased does the seller receive the funds right away or do the customers have to use the e-gift card to receive the funds?