Not able to use gift cards and promo cards for pre-paid appointments!!!

[AWellnessWithin]

I posted this topic almost 2 years ago and I can't believe that this has not been an added feature yet.  I pay and use square marketing to promote my business, all my returning clients book pre-paid appointments through my square on-line booking site.  THERE IS NOT AN OPTION TO USE GIFT CARDS OR ANY PROMO CODES ON THE ON-LINE BOOKING SITE!!!  We are really missing a huge opportuninty here, especially during the holidays when gift card sales are especially important.

ARE THERE ANY PLANS TO UPDATE THIS? Please don't say your looking into it like you did before, please make it happen!!!

[katieand]

Hi @AWellnessWithin - Thanks for taking the time to share about this again. I have shared your request with our Appointments team, but right now I don't have any update for you. Can you share a little bit more about how you would use this feature or what you would want it to look like? Our appointments team loves hearing specifics from sellers when it comes to feature requests. 

[AWellnessWithin]

My clients always pre-pay on the appointments on-line booking site. Maybe where it asks for credit card there can also be another box  right under it for gift card or promo codes, or even a drop down box with different methods of paying not just a credit card.  Thanks!!

[DaoDeJing]

I agree this is absolutely a bare-bones needed feature for Appointments.

However, perhaps the gift cards do work if attempted? Although I don’t require prepayment, I do take card info for no-show protection. Several customers have told me they entered their gift card number instead of credit card info and the system accepted it, which is surprising if true. It makes me wonder if the no-show fee would be taken from their gift card balance if I tried to charge them (thankfully I haven’t had to try it yet).

Can anyone at Square confirm this functionality?

[AWellnessWithin]

Are they the personalized for your business gift cards you can order from square, or are they store bought visa/mc/amex ones?

[DaoDeJing]

Ah, good question. They said they used one of the plastic gift cards from my store, which are the Square supported cards produced by eCard Systems.

As I recall (it's been about a month, so I may have some details off) a few minutes after I saw a new booking appear on my schedule the customer called. They said they don't have a credit card, so they tried using the number from the gift card. It seemed to work for them, but they were calling to ensure the booking had gone through. Indeed, it looked like a regular booking from my end.

When they arrived they proceeded to hand over the eCard Systems plastic gift card as payment.

I suppose it's possible I misunderstood them at some point, or they mispoke. Or perhaps my memory is suffering terribly and I've misremembered a major point somewhere. 🙂

[AWellnessWithin]

Thanks, hopefully square can confirm for us if they can use them just like a cc...would be such an awesome thing especially for the holidays!!

[Helen]

@DaoDeJing @AWellnessWithin Helen here from the Community team. I can confirm that at this time clients cannot use Square gift cards to prepay for an appointment. The reason this isn't possible is because Square gift cards do not have CVV, expiration dates or billing zip codes — all of which must be entered correctly to complete a payment. 

@DaoDeJing I'm not sure what happened with the customer you mentioned! It sounds like they did use a bank-issued card. If you can remember when the transaction happened you can check how it was booked from the Transactions section of your Dashboard. When you open the transaction and you'll see the card brand and the last four digits of the card number, e.g. Visa 1234. When a transaction is completed with a Square gift card you'd see Gift Card 5678 instead.

I'm sorry not to have better news and I understand how that this would be a really useful feature! Hopefully we'll have an update on this in future. 

[AWellnessWithin]

Hopefully square can get on this sooner then later, before the holiday season!!!!   I want to sell gift cards and feeling like we are losing alot of money not being able to use them for pre-paid appointments...not to mention can't promote them through a marketing campaign if they don't intergrate with appointments.

[GreatVibes]

Hi! is there any update on this topic. I came into the community today to specifically ask for this feature. I think there is a huge opportunity for increased revenue. All of our appointments are pre-paid, with the holiday season coming up we have a huge market of clients that have been asking for gift cards. The only problem is that they cannot book and appointment and pay with a square gift card. In order to pay for an appointment with a gift card, a client has to call in, we'd have to manually make the appointment for them to then send an invoice to the client for payment. That creates more work, it is time consuming and cumbersome for both the client and us. Can this idea please be forwarded to the appointment team again for analysis and consideration. 

Thanks!

[JJ_]

Hey there @GreatVibes

Our team is working hard on making this possible. Stay tuned for updates soon!