Custom

The providers listed in this section can be selected by any merchant as soon as Cardigan is installed.

Cardigan also supports additional providers on a per-merchant basis, built as part of an implementation project. If your gift card platform isn't listed, that doesn't mean it isn't supported - it means the integration is enabled for your store specifically rather than offered to everyone.

What Cardigan needs from your provider

Cardigan acts as an integration bridge between Shopify and your gift card platform, so the shape of the integration is determined by what your provider's API can do.

Required

Every integration needs, at minimum:

• A way to check a card's balance, given a card number and (where used) a PIN. This underpins balance checkers, the checkout and POS redemption forms, and the admin balance lookup tool.
• A way to verify credentials, so Cardigan can confirm a profile is correctly configured before you activate it. For most providers a lightweight balance or status call is enough.
• Documented, credentialed API access to a non-production environment, so the integration can be built and validated without touching live cards.

Redemption

To let customers pay with a gift card, your provider needs to support one of the following:

• Authorize and capture, where funds are held against the card while the customer completes checkout and captured once the order is placed. This is the preferred model, as it avoids charging a card for an order that is never completed.
• Immediate redemption, where the card is debited in a single call. Cardigan supports this, but it puts more weight on error handling because there's no hold to release if something goes wrong later in checkout.

Supporting void as well is strongly recommended in either case, so that funds can be released when a customer abandons their checkout or changes the amount they're redeeming.

Optional

The following extend what Cardigan can do, and are worth confirming with your provider early if they matter to you:

• Provisioning, to sell new digital gift cards through your online store or Shopify POS. Without it, Cardigan can check balances and take redemptions but cannot issue cards.
• Activation, to activate physical gift card stock at the point of sale.
• Refunds, to return funds to a card when an order is refunded in Shopify.
• Transaction history, to show a card's activity in the Cardigan admin.

Authentication and transport

Cardigan has been built against a wide range of API styles, including JSON REST and JSON-RPC, and a variety of authentication mechanisms - API keys, username and password pairs, and signed requests using a shared key.

We don't require any particular approach. What matters is that authentication is documented, that credentials can be issued per environment, and that they can be rotated without downtime.

How a custom integration comes together

A typical custom provider integration runs roughly as follows.

1. Discovery

We review your provider's API documentation against the requirements above and confirm which Cardigan functionality will be available. This is also where we identify anything unusual that will shape the build - card number formats, PIN handling, currency behaviour, or settlement happening in a system other than the gift card platform itself.

2. API access

Your provider issues credentials for their non-production environment, along with test cards. Some providers also require that an integration be certified before production access is granted; if so, we'll work through that process with you.

3. Build and validation

We build the integration and validate it end to end against your provider's non-production environment, covering each supported operation and its failure cases.

4. Go live

Once validated, your provider issues production credentials. You create a production profile in Cardigan, test the live flows, and activate it. From that point the integration behaves like any other provider in this section.

Getting started

If you're a merchant whose gift card provider isn't listed here, please reach out to our sales team: sales@runcardigan.com.

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