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! I’m sorry to hear you’re having delivery issues with your Square digital gift cards. Some things to check for: 

1. Make sure that the recipient’s email address is correct. You can check the recipient email address by going to your Square Dashboard >> Gift Card and clicking on the gift card details. If the email address is incorrect, you can resend the gift card and edit the email address.
2. Check that the gift card did not get delivered to the recipient’s Spam folder. To prevent this from happening in the future, we suggest having your recipient add noreply@messaging.squareup.com to their address book.

Hope this helps!

[rollershirts516]

Do you need to have a Square website in order to use the e-cards? I have setup e-cards and have an active link, but how do I get customers to use the gift card on my site hosted elsewhere? 

[lornaz]

Hi @rollershirts516! Nope, you do not need a Square Online website in order to sell digital gift cards.  If you aren't using Square Online, you can find the link to your eGift Card order site from the eGift Cards page in your online Square Dashboard. From there, I would cut and copy your order site URL and create a button that links to it from your website.

[rollershirts516]

Thanks, but then how would customers be able to purchase products? Would I have to create a discount code in my store's admin that would match the code on their e-gift card? I'm using BigCartel for my e-commerce provider.

[lornaz]

Hi! Thank you for the response. 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 BigCartel to build this integration. We recommend reaching out to BigCartel to let them know you’d like your customers to be able to use Square eGift Cards on your site!

If they haven't built an integration with our Gift Cards API, then that would require a manual workaround in order to redeem Square eGift Cards. You could create a unique discount code for each Square Gift Card (but that would still require you to reconcile the remaining balance on the gift card after it has been redeemed) or you could say in your customer redemption policy that gift cards cannot be redeemed online. I wish we had a better solution, but our best bet would be for BigCartel to integrate with our Gift Cards API to create the most seamless experience for you and your customers.

[LLHawaiian]

I have multiple stores, would the accounting be difficult if a customer's purchases a gift card from one store and uses it at another store?  How does the store that purchased the gift card get the credit for that sale?  Do we sell gift cards that can only be redeemed at that store and no other store?

[lornaz]

Hi @LLHawaiian! Thank you for your questions. To track your gift cards from multiple locations, take a look at the Inter-Location Payables & Receivables report in the Reports section of your Square Dashboard under Gift Cards. You can learn more about Square Gift Card Reporting and Analytics here. 

[MudMN]

Hello: I see the plastic gift cards come with a QR code now. It would be great to print out a QR code on e-gift cards, too, so we would redeem by scanning rather than entering 16 digits. I don't take e-gift cards because we are a retailer, which slows us down to enter the long code. We would sell a lot more if this scanning were an option. Thanks!

[Wendyct]

Great news @MudMN! We are introducing scannable QR codes to eGift Cards VERY soon. We'll let you know once they are available. Once we release QR codes for eGift Cards, you'll be able to scan them at your POS using your device's front facing camera.

We also recently introduced barcodes to eGift Cards which can be scanned using an attached barcode scanner. 

[MudMN]

Great! So right now I can have a barcode on egift cards and scan them with a hand scanner? Thanks, I did not know that. Does Square recommend a  brand or model of scanner for Square Stand? 

[keicollective]

You can read through which barcode scanners will work with your setup here: 

https://squareup.com/us/en/compatibility/accessories/barcode-scanners 

[keicollective]

I noticed the barcodes on eGift Cards last month which is a great step! but we havent been able to get them working? 

We're running Square for Retail on the Square Register with an attached scanner. Might be missing steps since it's pretty new, but any tips? 

[Wendyct]

Hi @keicollective! So sorry to hear that you are having some trouble scanning the barcode on the eGift Cards. I just confirmed a few things with our engineering team for you:

1. As of right now, you can only scan eGift Cards to redeem them as payment at checkout - you cannot scan to load them/sell them. The ability to scan to load gift cards is coming soon though! I'll update you when it's available.
2. To redeem a gift card on Square Register, you need to click "Manual Gift Card" on the payment page to signal that the customer is paying with a gift card. That will take you to a separate screen where you will be able to scan the barcode to redeem the gift card. You can finish up the payment from there. I know this is an extra step right now, so we are looking for ways to improve this, and we should have an update for you pretty soon. 

Thanks so much for your question and let us know if there is anything else we can help with 😁

[keicollective]

Thanks for the reply @Wendyct ! 

I'm not worried about scanning to load them since I love the current process of issuing that is on Square Register (customer types in their own email and it sends directly to them). 

It was the scanning on the Manual Gift Card page that wasn't working for us. We tried both scanning right after clicking on the Manual Gift Card section, as well as scanning after we put the cursor into the text field where you can type in the gift card number. Neither was working? 

We ended up just typing in the egift card number so that the customer didn't have to wait around too long. But I'll run a test with another one later this week when I have some time. 

We've run into a few things that Square for Retail doesn't do quite as well as Square POS on our Square Register. So was wondering if maybe that was the issue? (I did make sure that our version of Square for Retail is up to date) 

[MudMN]

Hello, I bought two Zebra LS2208 scanners, and I can't get them to scan a barcode on an egift card. It worked the very first time, and then it stopped working altogether. I have tried everything I can think of. Please advise? The scanner is on and connected to Square Stand, but it just can't read the barcode - no matter the distance. I don't think it is anything other than the scanners don't recognize your barcodes? 

[lornaz]

Hi @MudMN! Thank you for your question. I've circled back with our eng team and learned that the scanner model you have (Zebra LS2208) is a laser scanner and those generally do not work for scanning from phone screens. Some scanners that appear to be better at scanning phone screens are Zebra (symbol) DS6707, Honeywell Xenon 1900 and Socket Mobile SocketScan S700. 

I also wanted to reiterate that we will be adding QR codes to eGift Cards as well so you can also use your device camera to scan the QR codes for redemption. 

Let me know if this helps!

[MudMN]

Hi @lornaz, 

Hello again, thanks for the tip. I exchanged the Zebra scanners for Socket scan s700's. These scanners are fantastic, and it was easy to follow directions and get the scanner connected. I tried to scan a printed paper of the barcode gift card, and it worked wonderfully! 

However, I can still not scan the barcode on my phone within the email that I received with the gift card. Since the scanners have a very low battery, I think it is possible that they might not be working at top performance. I will test tomorrow, but I am worried.

I want to use a hand scanner because we are a drive-thru, so we need people to hold out their phones so we can reach out and scan. We don't want to take their phone and bring it into the Square Stand. 

Hopefully, we can solve this riddle, so others don't have to go round and round as I have. Thanks!

[MudMN]

SOLVED! I had my Gmail set to dark mode, so the barcode was off a little. I changed the Gmail to light mode, and the barcode popped on the white background of the email, and the scanners could scan my phone with no problem at all! So, if you want to scan e-gift cards with a hand scanner, I recommend the Socket Scan S700! It is light, cordless, and easy to set up! Please follow the instructions to a T, and you will love these canners!

[letsrankseo]

I am pretty sure I ordered some as well for Let's Rank SEO.

Should I just reorder them?

Thank you,

Joshua Simi

[lornaz]

Hi there! After ordering your gift cards, you should be able to use the link in the confirmation email from our gift card partner, eCard Systems, to track your order status. After your order has been placed, estimated combined production time and delivery time is about 12 to 18 business days. If you’re unable to locate your confirmation email or have any additional questions about your order, please call eCard Systems directly at 1-866-776-7409 or email artwork@ecardsystems.com.

[beekings]

I've received a few questions from folks wondering if they can use multiple gift cards to make one purchase ONLINE. I know it's possible in person, but it isn't yet possible online. Will this feature be added? Also, can customer RELOAD their gift cards online? Lastly, are you looking to integrate gift card purchasers with non Square/Weebly platform? Say I wanted to use square as my merchant for another wordpress or ecommerce system, can Square gift cards be accepted?

Thanks