Can I sell gift cards while in offline mode?

[JavaJoz]

Does anyone know if I can load and sell gift cards to customers while in offline mode? We will be at a market this weekend with spotty cell access, so are planning to be offline for the entire day.  We would manually enter the gift card numbers to load them and then check customers out using a magstripe reader.

[VanKalkerFarms]

That is an interesting question that I do not know the answer to currently.

I would think yes, but if that person tried to use the gift card before your device went online to complete the transaction the gift card might not show a value.  OR it might be if the transaction failed when you went online but after said customer used the gift card bought offline the customer would get the item free (which would be the same result if the customer used the credit card to buy the item offline)

@isabelle  @TheRealChipA any insights as to what would happen?  I don't use offline mode at all because I know how high the failure rate is for cards at my business and that is too high a risk when my average ticket sale is almost $100.

[TheRealChipA]

@VanKalkerFarms That is a very good question, and I think that the moderators should weigh in on this.  Unfortunately, this comes too late for @JavaJoz as their market probably ends today.  I can see good reasons why this could work with preprinted physical cards (definitely not eGift cards, though).  However, I could be missing something very important here in how the engineers implemented physical card activation.  So @_Violet could you check with the engineers and post their reply, for our future reference.  I’ll also add that even if they were eventually loaded/activated, they would not be able to be used right away, for obvious reasons.

And @JavaJoz sorry for the delay in getting back with you.  For future reference, it is a good idea to give this Community a little more than a day’s notice because as we all know life happens.  I just signed in after a week-long absence from the Community.

[_Violet]

Hi @JavaJoz - Thanks for reaching out to us here on the Square Seller Community👋 And thank you, @TheRealChipA for the tag here.

I was able to pull this information on Gift Cards from this Support Article on using Offline Mode:

"You can accept offline payments when your customer taps or inserts a card with a Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB, or Discover logo and when your customer swipes a card with a UnionPay logo. Afterpay transactions, Square gift cards and EFTPOS-only cards will not work with Offline Mode."

However, this is addressing using Gift Cards as a form of payment. I would assume that you could still issue Gift Cards while using Offline Mode because the customer would be paying with a credit/debit card or cash. I can certainly confirm with the Gift Cards product team to get a sure answer for you.

I'll report back with what I find out! 

[_Violet · Accepted solution]

Hey there again, @JavaJoz and @TheRealChipA 👋

I received a reply from an engineer on the Gift Cards team. Here's what they let me know:

"Unfortunately selling/loading gift cards is not currently supported while in Offline Mode, even if the customer pays with credit/debit or cash. The existing flows require internet connectivity for various reasons. For example, before selling/loading a physical gift card the Point of Sale checks that the gift card is valid to be sold/loaded at the given Seller."

I hope this information is helpful but please do let me know if you have any additional questions.

[JavaJoz]

Thank you @_Violet and @VanKalkerFarms and @TheRealChipA for your replies. I threw this question out the last minute on the off chance someone had some direct experience and could quickly respond.  We didn't take any chances with selling gift cards, and I appreciate knowing now that the functionality doesn't exist. I was nervous enough with taking offline payments (although our transactions average $7 each and we have very few declined cards), but that worked perfectly. Thanks again everyone!