Selling digital cards

The Sell digital gift card tile lets staff sell a digital gift card at the counter, capturing the recipient's details so the card is delivered to them by email.

The staff workflow

1. Staff tap the tile on the POS home screen.
2. They choose the card value from the list of variants you've made available, or enter a custom value if you allow it.
3. They enter the recipient's details - recipient name and email, the sender's name, an optional greeting, and optionally a delivery date if the card is for a future occasion.
4. They tap Add to cart, and the gift card is added to the POS cart like any other item.
5. The sale is completed through the normal POS payment flow.

The recipient's email address is validated as it's typed, so staff get immediate feedback rather than discovering a typo after the sale.

The details captured are attached to the line item as properties, exactly as they are for an online purchase. Cardigan reads them when provisioning the card with your provider.

When the card is issued

Adding a card to the cart doesn't issue it. The card is provisioned with your gift card provider once the order is paid, following the same provisioning trigger as your online store.

For most stores this means the card is issued and emailed to the recipient within moments of the sale completing. If a future delivery date was entered, the card is issued at the appropriate time instead.

Configuration

The following options appear in the Cardigan Configuration page once POS is enabled for your store.

Which variants can be sold

Under Digital gift cards (POS), select the product variants you want available to staff. Only these variants appear in the tile.

These are configured separately from your online store gift card matching, so you can offer a different set of denominations in store if that suits your business.

Allow custom values

Enabling Allow custom values lets staff enter an arbitrary amount rather than picking from your predefined denominations, which is useful for corporate orders or one-off requests.

Custom value cards are added to the cart as a custom sale rather than as a product variant.

Custom value SKU property

When custom values are allowed, this is the value Cardigan sets as the sku property on the custom sale line item.

Because a custom sale has no variant of its own, this property is what identifies the line item as a gift card. Setting it also means custom gift card sales can be reported on alongside your regular gift card products.

Full or discounted value

Determines the value the card is issued for when a discount has been applied to the sale:

• Use full value when provisioning digital cards issues the card for its face value, regardless of what the customer paid. This is the default.
• Use discounted value when provisioning digital cards issues the card for the amount actually paid.

Most merchants want the full value - a customer buying a $100 gift card in a promotion still expects a $100 card. Choose the discounted value only if your gift card program is intended to work the other way.

Selling more than one card in a sale

Each gift card variant can only be added to the POS cart once per sale, since the recipient details are attached to that specific line item. Staff attempting to add the same variant twice will see an "already in cart" message.

Custom value cards aren't subject to this - each one is added as a separate numbered line item, so several can be sold in a single transaction.

If a customer wants two cards of the same denomination for different recipients, staff can either use a custom value for the second card or complete one sale and start another.