Live Q&A: Ask us anything about Square Gift Cards!

[Helen]

On Tuesday 15th October at 1pm PST we hosted Square Gift Cards Live Q&A!

The holiday season is fast approaching and we want to make sure you’re prepared. The Product Manager for the Gift Cards team at Square, @lilychiang, will be joining us to answer all your questions about Square Gift Cards. 

Square Gift Cards are easy to set up, customize, and sell and they're a convenient gift option for your customers at this busy time of year. You can order physical Gift Cards from Square, and did you know you can offer digital Square eGift cards too? 

Whether you’re not sure if digital or physical Gift Cards are right for your business, or if you’ve used Gift Cards before — join us! 

Here are some example questions:

• How do I order Gift Cards?
• Can I restrict Gift Card sales to certain team members (e.g. managers)?
• Where can I see Gift Card reports?

👉 Click Reply below to ask your question and we’ll answer every question on 15th October! 🎁

[jcpark202]

Does Square Digital Gift Cards integrate with Woocommerce? If so, how do we get them working together?

[Helen]

@jcpark202 I think your question is more relevant to the Gift Cards Live Q&A so I've moved it to that thread! 

[lilychiang]

Hello @jcpark202! Square eGift Cards are not compatible with WooCommerce I’m afraid. We’ll share your request with WooCommerce and if you haven’t already, 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!

[CuriousClint]

We are in a mall , and people get mall gift cards 

We already have the square gift cards , but people come to us wanting to use the malls gift cards 

We are losing sales , ho ow does that work 

Thanks 

[lilychiang]

Hello @CuriousClint, mall gift cards are semi-open looped gift cards that work across multiple business. Today, Square gift cards are closed-looped gift cards that only work at your business. Unfortunately, we do not have plans in the immediate future to support semi-open gift cards but thank you for sharing your needs. 

[LSPA]

We are a power user of eGift Card and plastic Gift cards.  We believe it's a killer (sticky) feature of the Square POS.  Please find our questions:

1. Ability to update eGift Card order page.  It's the same order page for every merchant -- whether they sell ice cream or luxury items. I want ability to customize the colors, fonts, logo, add images for branding, etc. 

2. eGift card buyer/receiver names: if the last name is hyphenated or multiple words, e.g. Jim John Jones III.  It will truncate or send the first two words to the merchant dashboard.

3. We had multiple issues with customers getting frustrated for not receiving their egift card, etc.  Could you add a copy function so that merchant can add an email where they receive duplicate copies of the egift (if feature is enabled).  For users that migrated from printed gift certificates they can easily print the email and give to their customers. 

4.  Could you add a weekly or monthly email reporting feature?  And ability to assign emails that will receive those reports.  Once in a while we receive monthly reports on Gift card usage -- which we much appreciated! 

5. On the Gift Card dashboard activity page -- can you show the name associated with the transaction.  It will make the data more usable, otherwise it is just numbers without context. 

6. On the Gift Card dashboard, could you show Activations/Redemptions in a month.  Since, not every month has 30 days. 

7. When customer purchases eGift Card on POS, can you add option to print the eGift card.

8. Last, the printing cost on plastic Gift Cards is high.  I saw the comparison and reuse analysis by Square.  If merchant's average ticket is less than $50 than their cost of gift card as a percent of the total cost is high.  I believe if you are able to reduce the printing price by ~25%, you will see a pick-up in plastic gift card adoption.

Appreciate all your hard work and look forward to awesome updates!  Thanks.

[lilychiang]

Hi @LSPA, thank you for being a valued gift card seller. We understand that customization and tracking are important features for eGift Cards and we appreciate your feedback on examples of what you are looking for (questions 1-7!). We also understand that providing a more seamless experience for customers (such as printing) to receive gift cards is expected for an egift card solution. To help us prioritize, if you had to pick one of these features for us to build which one would it be and why?

When it comes to the cost of Gift Cards, we hear you. Square's Gift Card pricing is designed so that you pay a one-time fee to both order and use plastic gift cards for as long as you need them. We don't charge a monthly subscription fee to activate or redeem gift cards — many other Point of Sale systems/gift card providers will charge a monthly fee on top of the cost of ordering plastic cards. With Square, you pay for a batch of plastic gift cards, the per transaction fee to sell the gift card and that's it! It sounds like you’re using both plastic and eGift Cards which is a great way to keep costs down (you pay  2.9% + 30¢ fee when your customer buys an eGift Card). Do your customers prefer one over the other? 

Thanks in advance for your feedback! 

[LSPA]

Hi @lilychiang, Please find our Top 3 requests: #1 (customize egift card page), #4 (monthly or weekly reporting) and #6 (Monthly view instead of 30 days -- important for monthly financial reporting).

Based on our average transaction size, the cost of plastic gift card for us is less than 50 bps (0.5%).  But for thinly capitalized merchant with sub $50 ticket size, plastic gift card could add 2% to 3%, so all in ~6% for using plastic gift cards!

I think ~20% of gift cards sold during the last year were egift cards, mostly from the link on our website.  Though, recently we are seeing uptick in sale of egift cards at POS (in store).  We use graphics designer for eGift Card images that we refresh every quarter. I wish I had data to know which egift card images sell well. 😉

Many thanks!

[pessosices]

For ordering custom Plastic Gift Cards, I'd love an inbetween option, where I could not only put my business name, but also my logo, on one of the pre-set backgrounds - so it would be like the top of my digital receipts & marketing campaigns. Or being able to put in generic little line-drawing logo of a simple ice cream cone on top of my Business name. That would be super sweet.

[lilychiang]

Hi @pessosices, that’s a great suggestion and we’ll explore that option with our gift card vendor next year. Thank you for your feedback! 

[purplecow]

Hi Pesso,

    I am considering changing from paper gift certificates to the square cards.  My concern is about the price of the card, and that some people come in for just $5 amounts.   Do you have a minimum purchase for your gift cards?  Thank You!

[pessosices]

Hey @purplecow 

Totally get the concern there.
Highly recommend, if nothing else, doing the eGift Cards both on your POS and on your Website. eGift Cards are so much easier to track & manage & redeem than the old paper gift certificates, and they have multiple ways to use them. They can show the email, they can print it out, or they can even attach & link it to their phone number / email address, so you just tap to redeem. Easy!

Most of my customers do ask for a Plastic Gift Card, so we do love using them, despite the price.
I absolutely do have a $15 minimum for the Plastic Gift Cards because of the price of the cards, and a $5 minimum for the eGift Cards although that's not necessarily necessary. 

Most people are fine with the $15 plastic minimum, and if they want less, they go for the eGift Card instead. It's a win-win!

[purplecow]

Thanks for your quick reply, Pesso.  We do have a lot of request for $5 gift card from parents who want to give all their children's teachers something at Christmas. We don't plan to do anything online at this point.

[pessosices]

@purplecow 

We get that request too - they can buy eGift Cards directly from your POS device in your store (not only online), and can print them to give them out!

[purplecow]

Oh, really?  So, they order it in the store and then print at home?

[pessosices]

@purplecow It would be super awesome if we could print it from the receipt printer - I believe that's a feature request ( @kellyj & @Helen & @lilychiang )

As of right now, the customer enters in their own Email Address on the POS, and it emails it to the customer - so they can either forward it to the recipient, or print it out on their own at home to give out.

Here's the post all about it:

https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Product-Updates/You-can-now-sell-eGift-Cards-from-your-Square-Poi...

[bwoodson1979]

My comments are in regards to selling e-gift cards.

I would like to be able to personalize the website address that my customers go to in order to buy their e-gift cards.

Currently the website address that they go to is https://squareup.com/gift/KFS8GNRNHQJ96/order

After the word gift in that address, I would like to be able to put the name of my business, or something that identifies my business.

As it is now, there is nothing based on that website address to signify that it has anything to do with my business.

[lilychiang]

Hi @bwoodson1979 thank you for your feedback. We know personalizing your eGift Cards page is important for your business and we’ve heard similar feedback from other businesses as well. We will take this into account as we think about our roadmap for 2020. 

[lilychiang · Accepted solution]

Thank you for joining us today for the Live Q&A about Square Gift Cards!

If you’re new to Square, or you’re considering using Gift Cards for the first time, check out this video for the steps to set up and order your gift cards. It’s quick and easy to get started! 

You can order Gift Cards from your online Square Dashboard and we have holiday starter packs with themed cards so you can get ahead of the holiday rush! 😌 If you’re planning to use Gift Cards year-round, you can order custom Gift Cards with your business logo or business name. 

Last but not least, we recommend setting up your free eGift Cards order page to let all customers purchase from you! You can sell eGift Cards from your POS or you can sell eGift Cards online. Let your customers know about your eGift Cards by sending a free Square Marketing email campaign and you can also promote your eGift Cards via your website or on social media. You can also set up up promotional codes and discounts on your eGift Cards to promote your eGift cards during the holidays.  

Thanks for all of your feedback about Square Gift Cards, these are really helpful as we make plans for 2020 and beyond! 🎁 

[loaded]

The old system before the update was much easier to use to sell gift cards. I'm having trouble selling them with the new system. I revert back to the old.