Migrating gift cards & store credit

Introduction

If you sell or award gift cards, store credit, or loyalty points with a monetary value, use  Shopify’s Gift Card functionality. In this guide we’ll cover how to issue gift cards to your customers and important considerations to make when planning your migration to Shopify.  

By the end of this guide you’ll know:

• How to implement gift cards, store credit or a loyalty program on Shopify
• The most important considerations to make when using the Gift Card functionality

Issuing Gift Cards

Gift cards can be issued to customers in the following ways:

• Manually, from the Admin
• Via API, that also allows you to update their value
• In-store with Shopify POS 

Gift cards can be sold as products on your store.

Migrating Gift Cards

When migrating to Shopify, there are three ways to migrate over your current gift cards/store credit. This can be done manually, via API or through an app/partner.

Considerations When Migrating

There are some important details about gift cards that you should take into account as you plan your Shopify build:

• Gift card numbers are encrypted. After they have been created, only the last 4 digits will remain visible. If you need to keep a record of gift card numbers, maintain an external database
• Gift cards cannot be deleted, only disabled. Disabled gift cards cannot be re-enabled 
• The same gift card number cannot be used again even if the original gift card has been disabled
• If you are importing existing gift cards that are associated with a customer’s email address, contact Plus Specialist Support to have the gift card notification temporarily disabled. Then your customers won’t be notified when their gift card is imported to your new store
• If you sell gift cards on your store they will be sent to the email address the customer enters when starting the checkout. Customers ordering gift cards don’t have the option to enter a buyer address and a different recipient address