Selling and sending gift cards

This article covers what the customer sees on the product page, when a card is issued, and how the gift email reaches the recipient.

What the customer sees

The gift card product page has three short sections:

1. 01 · The gift: Choose an amount. The customer picks a preset amount or, if allowed, enters their own under Or choose your own within your minimum and maximum.
2. 02 · Make it personal: Who is it for?
   • Send to someone: Recipient name, Recipient email, Your name and A personal message (optional).
   • Send to me: the card goes to the buyer, with no recipient details needed.
3. 03 · Delivery: "Sent by email after payment is confirmed." With Pro, the customer can also schedule the email. See Designs, scheduled delivery and PDFs.

A live preview shows the card as the customer fills in the form.

Each unit of quantity becomes its own card with its own code. If a customer buys three cards for three different people, they add each gift to the cart separately. The cart shows the amount, recipient and delivery for each gift line.

Rules applied to every gift card line:

• Coupons and sale prices don't reduce a gift card's face value. Other products in the same cart follow your normal discount rules.
• A gift card can't be used to pay for a new gift card. See Redeeming gift cards at checkout.
• Express payment buttons from the Stripe gateway are hidden when the cart contains a gift card product.

Settings that change the form

Under Artbees → Gift Cards → General:

• Require recipient name: the recipient email is always required for Send to someone. This option also makes the name required.
• Message character limit.
• Store name on gift cards.

When a card is issued

A card is issued only once payment for it is confirmed. Pending, failed, on-hold and cash-on-delivery orders never create spendable cards. Moving an offline order to Processing doesn't issue cards either.

Online payments

When your payment gateway marks the order paid, the plugin issues one card for each paid gift unit. For Stripe and WooPayments it also checks that the captured amount and currency match before issuing. If something doesn't match, it adds an order note beginning "Gift card fulfillment needs review" and issues nothing.

Offline payments

For bank transfers, cheques and other offline methods, confirm the payment once the money has arrived. There are three ways to do it:

• From the order: open the order, choose Payment verified — issue gift cards in Order actions, and update the order.
• By completing the order: changing an offline order's status to Completed counts as your confirmation that it's paid.
• From the gift card workspace: go to WooCommerce → Gift Cards → Issue from an order. Enter the WooCommerce order number, tick I verified that this order's payment has been received., add a Payment reference and reason, then click Verify payment and issue cards.

Each of these needs the gift card issuing permission, and records who confirmed the payment. Repeating any of them never creates extra cards.

How the gift email is sent

Once a card is issued, its email joins the queue and goes out with the next background run. The plugin asks to run every minute, but WP-Cron only runs when the site gets visits, unless your host runs a server cron. The email uses your store's normal WordPress mail setup and the subject, heading and footer set under Emails.

The recipient's email contains a Use your gift card button that opens a private card page. That page shows the amount available to spend, the code with a Copy gift code button, the message and recent activity. Pro can add a printable PDF.

The buyer can follow their gifts too. On the order confirmation page and in My Account → Orders, the Your gifts section links to each gift's delivery page (View gift #… delivery).

Delivery states

Each card shows its email state separately from its balance:

A failed email never affects the card itself. The balance is intact and the card can still be spent. See Gift email troubleshooting.

Fixing common mistakes

Open the card from WooCommerce → Gift Cards.

• The recipient didn't get the email: in the Delivery section, click Resend existing card and give a reason. Resending sends the same card. It doesn't issue new value or recall the earlier email.
• The buyer typed the wrong email: under Availability & access → Correct recipient email, enter the right address and a Review reason, then click Rotate unspent, unclaimed access. The old code and links stop working and a new code goes to the new address. This only works for cards that haven't been spent, reserved or saved to an account. Anything else needs a manual review. Changing who owns value is never done silently.

With Pro and Purchaser self-service enabled, buyers can fix the recipient and message themselves before a scheduled gift is sent.

Related

• Redeeming gift cards at checkout
• Gift email troubleshooting
• Refunds