Gift Cards
Virtual gift cards are a great way to easily add additional products to your store and reach new audiences through your customers. With this feature, your customers can purchase one or more gift cards as part of their cart, optionally alongside other products, and send them to a recipient of their choice. They can select to send later, optionally add a Gift Message, and much more. Read on for how you can implement gift cards on your site.
Please look at the API documentation for implementing gift cards within your custom design.
You'll first need to create your product Gift Card in your Content Management System. Your Agency or developers can help you with it.
Here’s an example from our demo store
Once your Gift Card has been created in either Contentful or Sanity (or any other CMS of your choice), navigate to Chord OMS, click on Products --> Search for Gift Card, and click Edit.
Scroll down and look on the right inside. Verify that the Gift Card is checked; this will ensure no shipping cost is added to the virtual Gift Card.
Navigate to the Product Stock tab and make sure that you have inventory
Once your Gift Cards are available on your site, customers will select your pre-defined amount of Gift cards.
Currently, we can only support Gift Cards with a pre-defined amount
These virtual Gift Cards are available for immediate delivery via email and can be scheduled up to a year in advance.
You can add multiple Gift Cards to your Cart.
You can combine an order made of Gift Cards and Products
You can use a promo when buying a Gift Card
Email Order Confirmation: An Order Confirmation email is sent to the Customer (Buyer) stating the Recipient’s email, the Amount sent, and the Delivery Date.
The email template can be customized and branded to your specifications
Email Confirmation:
The Recipient gets an email notifying them they received a Gift Card
Note on how we apply store credit for gift cards:
Support for store credit in Stripe Checkout is still pending from Stripe, so we utilize a solution that avoids charging and refunding the customer the entire amount of store credit and avoids incurring excess Stripe fees.
We prorate the store credit equally onto the items and shipment and add a 10% buffer in advance to cover any taxes that may arise. We then request Stripe to refund the customer the difference once Stripe informs us of the actual tax rate.
Once the order is complete, the amounts will show correctly on the order confirmation page, the email, the OMS, and the Stripe dashboard.
We strongly recommend that you add a note on your cart to let your customers know about the prorate.
If your customer has received a Gift Card and redeems it without being logged in and checks out with the email address the Gift Card was sent to
- The customer will not see the available credit in their cart
- The guest will not see the available credit in Checkout
- Gift Card credit is applied after the Checkout is completed to cover the entire order
- The full payment in Stripe is refunded
Example:
A customer has received a $20 Gift Card and buys a $10 product + shipping and taxes while checking out as a guest (i.e. the customer is not logged into their account)/
The Gift Card amount will be available in a form of a Store Credit
Credit is not being applied in the Cart
Credit is not being applied at Checkout BUT Payment is immediately fully refunded
In the Chord OMS you can see that the order was actually paid with the Gift Card/Store Credit:
A confirmation email will display the correct payment method!
- The customer will see the available credit in their cart
- The customer will see a note in Checkout that their order is covered by credit. A processing fee is applied to the order that will be refunded after.
- Gift Card credit is applied after the Checkout completes to cover the entire order
- The processing fee is refunded in Stripe
Customer received a $25 Gift Card. That same customer buys a $25 product, in the example below, a gift Card for the cost of $25
The Checkout will prorate the 10% buffer $2.50
It looks like the customer will be charged $2.50 but looking at the order in the OMS all is accurate and no charges has been made
In this other example, the customer received a $75 Gift Card and purchases an $80 product.
The Checkout will prorate the 10% buffer for each item $8.00 + $5 that will be charged (CC or any other payment methods you'd have available in your store.
The Checkout will prorate the 10% buffer for each item $8.00 + $5 that will be charged (CC or any other payment methods you'd have available in your store. In the Chord OMS, you will be able to see the transactions for the $5 and for the Gift Card.
The two transactions seen above for Store Credit, reflects the two Gift Cards received for that user.
You can add a custom message below the shipping and billing address collection at checkout. For more information, please refer to the Environment Variables document
Purchasing
Can my customers buy multiple Gift Cards?
Yes, your customers can buy multiple Gift Cards alongside other products. Before checkout, your customers can provide their email addresses for purchasing each gift card.
Please note that these gift cards will have to be in various amounts; for example, a customer cannot select two gift cards of identical amounts to send to two different people.
Can my customers use Store Credit to buy a Gift Card?
Yes, Store Credit is a valid form of payment and be used to buy Gift Cards
Is there a character limit in the Gift Message customers can send?
While we support storing nearly any length of messages, we encourage you to set your own character limit when rendering the form on your website
Can customers pay with a Gift Card and another form of payment?
Gift cards work like store credit. Once your customers have been gifted, the credit will be applied to their associated email address to redeem. The amount will automatically apply to their next purchase. If they do not have enough store credit in their account to complete the purchase, they can pay the remaining balance with their credit card.
Redeeming
How do my customers redeem their Gift Card?
These are the steps to redeem a Gift Card:
- Open the gift card confirmation email (You Have a Gift!). Find and click the ‘Redeem’ link.
- Customers will be directed to your site and should log in.
- When they are ready to make a purchase, the credit will automatically deduct during the last step of checkout before selecting “Submit”.
Can we redeem and apply the customer's Gift Card when placing a manual order in the OMS?
Yes, you can place an order on behalf of the customer
Can customers redeemed their Gift Card more than once?
If there aren't any credit remaining on the Gift Card, your customers will not be able to redeem it more than once.
Do the Gift Cards expire?
No, since the Gift Card is a Store Credit it will not expire
Where in the OMS can I see if a customer has a Gift Card to Redeem?
In the OMS navigate to the User's page --> Users --and click the arrow next to Subscriptions
Click Redeem Gift Card
and enter the Identifier (found on the order)
and click Create
Redeeming
What happens if my customers provide a valid but incorrect email address?
Option 1* - In the OMS you can update the email address on the Gift Card and resend the email. (The recipient will still need to create an account if they don't have one)*
Option 2*- You can use the identifier to create the store credit in the OMS in the Users section: (An account can be created by the Admin for the user if the user does not exist as of yet)
Will the Gift Card be redeemable once it has been canceled?
In order to ensure that your Gift Card is not redeemable if the order needs to be canceled is to Deactivate the Gift Card
In the OMS: Go to the order that contains the Gift Card and click on the Shipment tab.
Click Edit Details link right below the Identifier and on the next page click Deactivate. Then proceed with Canceling the order
Can customers redeemed their Gift Card more than once?
If there aren't any credit remaining on the Gift Card, your customer will not be able to redeem it more than once
What happen if a customer has a Gift Card but cannot redeem it?
Reasons why a customer cannot redeem their Gift Card vary, it might have been deactivated, previously redeemed or they aren't logged in and do not have an account, or are using a different email than the one sent to them
Reach out to us once you have tried the above and we will help us investigate - In the alternative you can always apply a Store Credit to your customer
*Gift Card credit will not apply ***when shopping in guest checkout
Shipping/Delivery
Can my customers select a later date to send my Gift Card?
Yes, customers can choose to send their Gift Card along with the notification (email) at a later date of their choice
Are there any shipping fees on a Gift Card?
No, there aren’t any shipping fees associated with the purchase of a Gift Card.
Customer never received the email notifying them that a Gift Card was sent to them. Can we send them an email?
Yes! you can resend the email by navigating to the Gift Card order
Click on Edit Details and on the next page click on Send email now
The email is resent!
Purchasing
Can my customers select a different amount other than what’s displaying for a Gift Card?
You can create variants in your CMS to reflect the amount(s) you want your customers to select. At this time there isn't the ability for a customer to select their own amount.
What happens if my customer enters an invalid email address?
An error message will display letting your customers know that the email provided is not valid
Why do our customers have to enter their Credit Card info to purchase a product that their Gift Card amount will cover?
You will have to enter a valid credit card during the payment step of checkout to complete the process, but don’t worry!
Before placing your order, you will see your adjusted total with the credit applied
Canceling
The order was canceled but the customer was able to redeem their Gift Card why?
In order to ensure that your Gift Card is not redeemable if the order needs to be canceled is to Deactivate the Gift Card
A potential solution would be the cancel the order that was placed using that Gift Card
Can you Reactivate a Deactivated Gift Card?
Once a Gift Card has been deactivated you cannot reactivate it. You can apply a Store Credit to that customer if the Gift Card was deactivated by mistake
For more information about Store Credit, pease refer to this manual
if you have any questions or need help, please reach out to us at [email protected]