Gift cards

Sellerlane gift cards have two halves that meet in the same ledger. You sell a gift-card product so buyers can purchase a card (for themselves or a recipient) in checkout, and you issue individual cards by hand from the admin — for promotions, compensation, or in-person sales. Either way you end up with a real gift card: a code, a balance in store currency, an expiry, an owner, and a full transaction and activity history.

The two flows live in different places:

• Sell a gift-card product — create a product whose type is Gift card, with one or more denominations. Manage it under Products.
• Issue a card from the admin — go to Gift Cards in the store sidebar and choose Create Gift Card. This page is also where every card (sold or issued) is listed, searched, and managed.

Note

Gift cards are stored value, not a discount. They are paid for at face value and redeemed as a tender at checkout. Redeemed value is never refundable as cash — if a buyer overpays they keep the balance for next time.

Sell a gift-card product

A gift-card product is a normal product with Product type → Gift card. Instead of a stock-tracked price, you define the denominations a buyer can choose.

1. Create a product and set its type to Gift card.

2. On the Denominations step, add each face value you want to offer (for example ₹500, ₹1,000, ₹2,000). The defaults are 10 / 50 / 100 — replace them with your own. Each denomination becomes a selectable variant of the product.

3. Optionally fill in Redeem instructions — short text shown to the buyer explaining how to redeem the card.

4. Publish the product like any other so it appears in your storefront.

When a buyer buys a gift-card product they can add recipient details — a recipient email, a sender name, a personal message, and an optional scheduled send date. A digital card has no shipping, so a cart containing only gift cards (or only digital/event items) skips the shipping step entirely at checkout.

Scheduled delivery and issuance

A purchased gift card is only issued — meaning a real card with a code exists — once the order is paid/fulfilled. Delivery then depends on the send date the buyer chose:

• No scheduled date — the card is delivered to the recipient email immediately on issuance.
• A future scheduled date — a background job checks for cards whose send date has arrived and delivers them then. Delivery is re-checked live each run, so a card on a canceled order or one that has been deactivated before its send date is simply skipped — nothing goes out.

Tip

Gift cards cannot be paid for with a gift card. Any gift-card line is excluded from gift-card tender at checkout, so a buyer can’t use one card’s balance to buy another.

Issue a gift card from the admin

Go to Gift Cards → Create Gift Card. The form has three tabs: Details, Recipient, and Advanced.

1. Set the value. Pick a predefined amount or choose Enter custom amount and type any value (up to 9,999.99 in store currency).

2. Choose expiration. Three options: Never expires, Expires after duration (a number of months from creation, 1–60), or Expires on date (a specific date and time).

3. Add an internal note (optional). This note is for staff only and is not shown to the customer.

4. Add recipient details (Recipient tab, optional). Enter a recipient name and recipient email. Turn on Send gift card email to email the card to that address the moment it’s created (the toggle is disabled until you enter an email).

5. Assign to a customer (optional). Search your customers and link the card to a customer account so it shows on their profile. A card can be assigned now or later.

6. Set a custom code (Advanced tab, optional). Leave blank to auto-generate a secure code, or type your own (4–20 characters, A–Z, 0–9, and hyphens only).

7. Choose Create Gift Card. You’re taken to the card’s detail page.

Caution

A gift-card code is equivalent to cash. The code is generated once and stored securely; the admin shows a masked reference (a short ID) by default. Use Reveal code only when you need to hand the full code to a customer — every reveal is recorded in the card’s activity log.

Manage a card: balance, ledger, and actions

Open any card from the Gift Cards list to reach its detail page. The header shows the card’s state — ACTIVE, DISABLED, or EXPIRED — its balance, original amount, times used, and a balance-usage bar. The Actions menu drives everything below.

Transaction history and activity timeline

Two tabs record what has happened to the card:

• Transaction history — the money ledger. Every row has a type — ISSUED, REDEEMED, REFUNDED, ADJUSTED, or EXPIRED — an amount, the balance after, a note, and who performed it (an admin or the System).
• Activity timeline — the audit log of non-money events: created, deactivated/reactivated, expiry changed, assigned/unassigned/ reassigned, details updated, code revealed, and email sent.

Adjust the balance

For an ACTIVE card, Adjust balance lets you Add credit or Deduct an amount, with an optional reason. The change posts as an ADJUSTED transaction in the ledger.

Manage expiration

Manage expiration lets you set, change, or remove the expiry. If a card has already expired but still has a balance, extending its expiry brings it back into use — the original expiry is remembered, and a Modified badge marks cards whose expiry was changed.

Edit details, assign, resend, reveal

1. Edit details — update the internal note and the recipient name/email.

2. Assign / Reassign to customer — link the card to a customer, move it to a different customer, or remove the assignment. Assignment changes are logged and do not affect the balance.

3. Resend gift card — re-email the card. Defaults to the recipient on file; you can enter a corrected address. Available on ACTIVE cards that have a recipient email.

4. Reveal code — show the full code so you can share it with a customer. Recorded in the activity log.

Deactivate and reactivate

Deactivate sets the card to DISABLED so it can no longer be redeemed. This protects the unspent balance (for example a lost or fraudulent card). A disabled card can later be reactivated back to ACTIVE with an optional note. You can also deactivate cards in bulk from the Gift Cards list by selecting them and choosing Bulk actions → Deactivate.

Find cards fast

The Gift Cards list supports search, a state filter (Active / Disabled / Expired), sorting (created, updated, expiry, last used, balance, original amount, code), and More filters for balance type (full / partial / none), active status, usage, and expiration. The summary cards at the top show total cards, total issued, current balance, and total redeemed.

Redemption at checkout

Buyers redeem a card by entering its code in the gift-card field at checkout.

1. The buyer types the code into the gift-card box and chooses Apply.

2. Sellerlane looks up the card for your store, checks it is active and not expired, and that it has an available balance. An unknown, disabled, or expired code is rejected with a clear message; an empty or zero-balance code is declined too.

3. The applied card shows as a masked entry in the order summary, with a gift-card row reducing the amount due. The buyer can apply more than one card and remove any of them.

4. The gift-card balance is reserved while the cart is open so it can’t be double-spent, then drawn down as a REDEEMED transaction when the order is placed. Any remaining gift-card balance stays on the card for next time.

Only the gift-card-eligible portion of the order can be paid with a card — gift-card line items themselves are excluded, so a buyer can never buy a gift card using another gift card.

Cards from refunds

There are two distinct refund situations involving gift cards — keep them apart.

Refunding onto a gift card (gift-card settlement)

When you refund an order you can settle part or all of it onto a gift card instead of going back to the original payment. A refund records gift-card allocations that post to the chosen card(s) when the refund succeeds, appearing there as REFUNDED transactions. Guards apply:

• A refund onto a card can never push its balance above the card’s original value — the per-card ceiling is enforced.
• The total gift-card refund can’t exceed the gift-card amount that was actually used on the order.

This is one of several settlement methods. See refunds & returns for the full refund flow, and store credit for the account-credit alternative.

Refunding a purchased gift-card line

If you refund (or cancel) the line on which a customer bought a gift card, the issued card is deactivated — its unspent balance is killed so it can’t be redeemed after the money was returned. Already-spent value is not clawed back, because you chose the refund amount. The one block: if the card has an in-flight redemption reservation, voiding is refused until that settles, to avoid a double-spend — retry once it clears.

Note

A refund is a financial action. Refunding an order does not automatically revoke a fulfilled digital download, event booking, or admin-issued gift card — deactivate those separately if needed. The automatic deactivation above applies only to the purchased gift-card line itself.

Troubleshooting

• “Gift card not found” at checkout. The code is mistyped or belongs to a different store. Confirm the exact code with Reveal code on the card.
• “Gift card is inactive or expired.” The card is DISABLED or past its expiry. Reactivate it or extend its expiry from the card’s Actions menu.
• Balance won’t apply. The card has no available balance, or its full balance is already reserved by an open cart. Zero-balance cards are declined.
• Send-email toggle is greyed out. Enter a recipient email first — the toggle is disabled until there’s an address to send to.
• Custom code rejected. Codes must be 4–20 characters using only letters, numbers, and hyphens.
• Scheduled card never arrived. Delivery is re-checked live; a card on a canceled order, or one deactivated before its send date, is skipped. The card must also be issued (the order paid/fulfilled) before it can send.
• Can’t deactivate a purchased card on refund. It has an in-flight redemption reservation; retry once the reservation settles.

Next steps

Add products

Create the gift-card product and its denominations in add products.

Refunds & returns

Settle a refund onto a gift card or store credit in refunds & returns.

Store credit

The account-balance alternative to gift cards in store credit.

Customer accounts

Assigned cards show on the customer’s profile — see customer accounts.