Gift card matching

Before Cardigan can do anything with an order, it needs to know which of the items in that order are gift cards.

This is the most fundamental piece of Cardigan configuration. If matching isn't set up correctly, gift cards simply won't be picked up when customers buy them.

Digital and physical are matched separately

Cardigan matches digital and physical gift cards independently, because they're handled quite differently: a digital card is provisioned and emailed to its recipient, while a physical card is a piece of stock that gets activated.

Both are configured in the Cardigan Configuration page, under Digital gift card matching (Online Store) and Physical gift card matching (Online Store).

Point of sale is configured separately

These settings apply to purchases through your online store.

What your staff can sell through Shopify POS is configured separately - see Selling digital cards and Activating physical cards.

Matching methods

Each matching section offers a choice of how to identify gift cards.

By product

Select one or more products, and every variant of those products is treated as a gift card.

This is the default and the right choice for most stores. If you sell a single "Gift card" product with variants for each denomination, select the product and you're done - adding a new denomination later needs no configuration change.

By variant

Select individual variants, and only those are treated as gift cards.

Use this when a product contains a mix of gift card and non-gift-card variants, or when you want to roll Cardigan out to some denominations before others.

Check your matching after changing products

Matching is what determines whether an order is picked up by Cardigan at all. If a gift card product isn't matched, customers can buy it and no card will ever be issued.

Whenever you add a new gift card product or variant, confirm it's covered by your matching configuration and place a test order.

Card number and PIN settings

Alongside matching, Cardigan holds a few settings describing the shape of the cards your provider issues.

Configured by the Cardigan team

These are set up for your store by the Cardigan team to match your provider, rather than being editable in the admin.

If your card format changes, or something doesn't look right, get in touch.

PIN behaviour

Determines whether customers are asked for a PIN when checking a balance or redeeming a card. One of:

Required: a PIN must be supplied. This is the default.
Optional: a PIN may be supplied, and is validated against an expected format if it is.
Not used: no PIN field is shown at all.

Every customer-facing surface follows this setting automatically - the balance checker, cart redemption and the checkout and POS forms all adapt, including their prompt text.

PIN pattern

When PIN behaviour is optional, a pattern describing what a valid PIN looks like, so obviously invalid input can be rejected before a request is made to your provider.

Card length

The expected length of a card number, used to validate input and to format card numbers consistently. Defaults to 20 digits.