Omnichannel gift cards for your Shopify store.

Easily integrate your external gift card provider to give customers a seamless cross-channel experience.

balance-checker.js
cardigan.js
cardigan.api.checkBalance({
  number,
  pin,
  onSuccess: (card) => displayCardBalance(card)
})

Introduction

Getting started

Jump straight to the section you're interested in, or read on for a high-level overview of Cardigan.

Installation

How to get Cardigan installed and configured on your Shopify store.

Theme integration

How to expose customer-facing functionality in your Shopify theme.

Overview

Cardigan is a Shopify App that allows merchants to provide their customers with omnichannel gift card experiences.

Why Cardigan?

While Shopify provides its merchants with native gift card functionality, merchants will often leverage a separate provider to operate as the source of truth for their gift card program. This can be due to:

  • the need for integration into other systems (such as POS systems or ERPs);
  • financial requirements around auditing, compliance, or reporting;
  • operational requirements with vendors or suppliers;
  • legacy technology or business choices.

Whatever the reason, if the provider does not have a supported integration with Shopify, customers can be left with a poor experience as they are unable to purchase cards online for use in store or elsewhere, and vice versa. As customer expectations around online commerce continue to rise, this lack of omnichannel gift card support can lead to increased customer support load, negative customer sentiment, and ultimately loss of customer lifetime value.

Cardigan offers a solution to this problem by providing an integration bridge between Shopify and external gift card providers, delivering a seamless gift card experience to customers while giving merchants control over their choice of gift card provider.

How it works

Cardigan can be installed into a Shopify store just like any other Shopify App. Once installed, merchants are able to configure a "Profile" to specify which external gift card provider to use and how to connect to their API.

With a profile set up, merchants and partner agencies can choose to add customer-facing functionality like gift card balance checkers and product pages via drag-and-drop Shopify theme components, or build out completely custom theme integrations via the Cardigan.js client library.

The redemption of gift cards is also supported via integration with the Shopify checkout, allowing customers to redeem gift cards directly with a secure and seamless experience.

Once live, Cardigan automatically acts as an integration bridge between Shopify and the chosen external gift card provider, coordinating provisioning, redemption, balance and refund requests.

Note on gift card redemption

At the time of writing, the ability to redeem external gift cards in the Shopify checkout is restricted to Shopify Plus merchants only.

An alternative flow allowing customers to redeem external gift cards from the Shopify theme cart page is available - contact us to learn more.

Origin story

The first version of Cardigan was built out at Shopify Plus Partner agency Disco Labs in response to the needs of their clientele (typically larger merchants with specific integration needs). Over time, the need for solutions like Cardigan became more and more apparent, leading to the release of Cardigan as a standalone product available to all merchants.

Getting help

Having worked with thousands of merchants and partner agencies over the years, we know how critical effective support is. The Cardigan team aims to provide all of our customers and partners with timely support throughout the application lifecycle - from solutions to implementation and beyond.

Sales support

If you're a Shopify merchant or a Shopify partner agency interested in leveraging Cardigan to provide an omnichannel gift card experience, please reach out to our sales team: sales@runcardigan.com.

Customer support

If you're an existing Cardigan customer looking for help or to report a problem, please use the help links inside the app in your Shopify admin, or reach out directly to support: help@runcardigan.com.

Partnerships support

If you're a gift card provider interested in a partnership to provide your existing customers with an omnichannel experience on Shopify and grow your target audience, please reach out to our partnerships team: partnerships@runcardigan.com.

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Installation