Customers love gift cards! They are a convenient gifting idea that allows the one who receives it to choose exactly what they want from their place of issue. Store-owners and retailers love them too because they represent more sales.
Gift cards are the number one choice for corporate rewards and incentives, and most employees report that they’d rather get a gift voucher than cash or merchandise.
Shopify’s POS gift cards allow your customers to share their appreciation for your brand, adding more value to your business.
What Are Gift Cards?
Gift cards are also called gift vouchers, tokens, or certificates. They are typically available in the form of a card that is pre-loaded with a certain denomination.
These cards are issued by stores, banks, etc. and can be redeemed for products or services provided by the same retailer or bank. You could say that they’re similar to prepaid debit cards that are loaded with a specific amount of money.
They’ve been around since 1932. Taking advantage of the Christmas season, publisher Harold Raymond issued the first book tokens in the UK, and within four years,
Boots had launched the very first individual store vouchers. In the US, Neiman Marcus issued gift cards in 1994. Currently, they are worth $87 million for the retail industry in America.
Why They’re So Popular
- Companies use gift cards as incentives and festive bonuses. They can also be used to reward performance, as spot rewards, for health and wellness programs, business gifts, etc.
- They’re a popular gifting idea for family and friends. These cards have great value for people of all ages and give them a sense of choosing their gift, even if they’re locked into purchasing it from a particular store.
- As a non-cash gift, they seem more sophisticated and allow the recipient to experience guilt-free shopping. If they find something that exceeds the value of the gift card, they can make up the difference and buy something they wouldn’t otherwise have done.
- Corporate gift cards give employees more positive feelings about the company as they can use these cards for family activities, outings, fine dining, etc.
- POS gift cards are flexible, they don’t have additional charges, and unless the store shuts down, you have lots of time to choose your gift.
- Not many people know that unwanted, unused gift cards can be auctioned on eBay, traded in for other items, re-gifted, or donated to a charity.
Types Of POS Gift Cards
There are two gift card options available. They include:
- Cash cards: are sponsored by credit card companies and can be used anywhere credit cards are accepted. You can use them for any purpose, including paying your utility bills or making online purchases.
- Store cards: are specific to a particular retailer. The recipient can use them to purchase items from the store, during a particular period. However, you need to review the fine print to check their validity and reduction in value over time.
Shopify’s POS Gift Cards
As a retailer who partners with Shopify, you can sell physical gift cards that are customized to match your store design, logo, or brand. For doing this, you have to be on the Shopify plan or higher and must enable the physical gift card option in the Shopify POS.
These cards can be used to purchase from either the physical or the online store. You can also sell email and printed gift cards.
To activate the Shopify gift card feature, you can simply look at the easy-to-follow instructions on the Shopify manual and create the kind of card you’d like to offer to your customers.
On Shopify, you can sell the gift cards like any other product
The card has important information for the retailer and the customer. These are:
- Store name
- Monetary value
- Validation code
- Two-dimensional bar-code
Purchase of Shopify POS gift cards can be refunded after you have disabled the card. You can also add or update gift card products after entering the information in the fields provided on the Shopify admin page.
Other great features enable you to add a new gift card denomination, remove a gift card product denomination, add a gift product to a larger collection, publish the product on gift card catalogs, and also preview a gift card product.
Benefits Of Adding Shopify Gift Cards
Adding Shopify gift cards to your store has several great advantages:
- Since gift cards are fully paid upfront, you get the benefits of a floating balance on your books.
- Unused gift cards mean extra revenues
- In practice, most shoppers tend to purchase more than the value of the gift card
- Gift cards give your customers more options and build loyalty
- They reduce the chances of returns and exchanges as the recipient of the gift gets to select exactly what they want.