Gift cards

A purchased gift card is stored value with a redeemable code. You can sell a gift-card product under Products, or issue an ordinary card through Gift Cards → Create Gift Card. Both appear in the gift-card list with their balance, expiry, transactions, and activity history.

There is an important ownership distinction:

Card type	Who can use it?	Does profile assignment change ownership?
Purchased or ordinary admin-issued card	The holder of the valid code, subject to checkout and card restrictions	Assignment links it to a customer profile; it does not make an ordinary bearer code personal-only
Legacy personal reward card	Its original signed-in reward customer, in Personal context	The original reward owner cannot be reassigned, removed, or merged away

The supported loyalty redemption catalog does not currently offer new gift cards or store-credit redemptions. Existing personal reward cards still need their ownership protections; their presence in history is not a new reward type you can enable. See loyalty and referrals.

Payment method, not a discount

A gift card is a payment method, not a discount. Refunding a purchase that used a card restores its original gift-card payment within the applicable limits; it does not convert that value into a gateway cash refund. Refunding the product used to buy the gift card is a different operation, explained below.

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 — when its gift-card fulfillment is provisioned. Normal automatic provisioning requires an open, fully paid order; a COD or partially paid order does not automatically issue a usable card. Delivery then depends on the send date the buyer chose:

• No scheduled date — the card is delivered to the recipient email through the delivery queue after 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 the value. For INR, the form allows up to ₹9,999.99; the displayed limit follows the store currency’s minor units.

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 a valid recipient email. Send gift card email turns on when the address is valid unless you switch it off. It is disabled without a valid recipient address; delivery is queued after creation.

5. Assign to a customer (optional). Search your customers and link the card to a customer account so it shows on their profile. An ordinary card can be assigned now or later. This is a profile association, not a restriction to that customer at redemption.

6. Set a custom code (Advanced tab, optional). Leave blank to auto-generate a secure code, or type your own using 8–20 letters or digits. Hyphens and spaces are separators and do not count toward that length.

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

Protect the full gift-card code

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 a card from the Gift Cards list to reach its detail page. The management flows below describe ordinary purchased or admin-issued cards; personal reward ownership remains restricted as described above. 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 for an ordinary card. Changes are logged and do not affect the balance. A personal reward card refuses a change away from its original reward owner, even if its balance is zero.

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 and checks its state, expiry, available balance, and any personal reward restriction. An unknown, disabled, expired, or unavailable card is rejected. A personal reward card also needs its original customer signed in and a Personal checkout.

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. During checkout preparation, the selected amount is temporarily reserved, then consumed when the order is placed. Merely leaving a cart open does not promise an indefinite hold. Any remaining balance stays on the card.

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.

Restoring a gift-card payment

The supported D2C refund flow restores the gift-card tender originally used on the order. It does not offer a general conversion of a card/UPI payment into a gift card. Successful gift-card refund allocations post REFUNDED transactions to the original cards.

• The refund is capped by the order’s remaining refundable gift-card payment.
• Each card allocation is bounded by its original application and refund history; it cannot arbitrarily top up another card.
• A refund cannot push a card balance above its original value.
• State and expiry still matter. Restoring value does not by itself promise a new expiry or make an invalid personal reward transferable.

Example: an order paid ₹500 by a purchased gift card and ₹1,000 through a gateway is fully refunded. The original payment split is ₹500 back to the card and ₹1,000 externally, subject to the refund preview and processing results. It is not a ₹1,500 new gift card or ₹1,500 gateway payout.

See refunds and returns for the refund preview and store credit for the separate rules for personal account credit and promotional recovery.

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. This does not recover merchandise already bought with the card. Check the card’s spend history before deciding the refund amount. An in-flight redemption reservation can block the card’s deactivation even though the financial refund finishes. That failure is recorded as a payment exception; check the reservation outcome and deactivate the card manually afterward. Automatic retry of this purchased-card deactivation is not currently provided.

Refunding money and revoking access

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 temporarily reserved by another checkout. 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. Use 8–20 letters or digits, excluding separator hyphens and spaces from the count.
• 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 have been issued by fulfillment before it can send.
• Can’t deactivate a purchased card on refund. It has an in-flight redemption reservation; check the reservation outcome before retrying.
• A personal reward card will not apply or reassign. Check the original reward owner and Personal context. Do not try a customer merge to transfer the reward.

Personal reward cards have separate limits

Legacy reward cards and promotional credit are not interchangeable with purchased gift-card value. Read Rewards: settings and recovery for source-linked recovery, expiry and already-spent value. Promotional recovery does not authorize taking unrelated purchased gift-card value.

Next steps

Add products

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

Refunds & returns

Restore original payment tenders using 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.