We're building a coin redemption integration using the Square Gift Card API. Our flow is entirely programmatic — not a consumer-facing gift card product:
Consumer initiates a coin redemption at checkout
Twism calls the Gift Card API to create a gift card and load it with the redemption value via loadGiftCardBalance()
The gift card is passed to the cashier as a one-time-use tender
Cashier processes it via "Pay with Gift Card" at the Square POS terminal
The gift card is never sold to the consumer — it's created and consumed in a single transaction as a payment instrument.
Question
We found this support article which mentions:
A 2.5% load fee for gift cards
A 3.3% + 30¢ processing fee for digital eGift cards
We want to confirm specifically:
Does calling loadGiftCardBalance() via the API trigger the 2.5% load fee on the merchant's Square account?
Does the fee structure for API-created gift cards used as POS tender differ from gift cards sold to consumers (retail or eGift)?
If a fee applies — is it charged to the merchant's account or to the account associated with the API credentials (in our case, Twism's)?
We previously received verbal confirmation that there would be no fees associated with this flow, but we want written confirmation before proceeding with merchant rollout.
