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Gift Card Overview

Target Audience: Users, Developers, Stakeholders

Introduction

Gift cards in Payway are a way for your customers to purchase and give away limited subscriptions for themselves, their family, or their colleagues. While this feature cannot be used with Payway "out-of-the-box" and requires an API implementation, it can be a very useful tool in helping your customers purchase gifts for their use.

This feature is disabled by default, but if this sounds interesting and you would like to learn more, do not hesitate to contact our support.

Prerequisites

  • The given payment period for the package that is given away, must be of type Limited. (Packages only)
  • The campaign that is given away, must not transition to another package or campaign when the campaign ends. (Campaigns only)
  • The package/campaign that is given away must have appropriate gift options enabled, allowing the product to be sold as a gift.

How to purchase a gift card

For your customers to purchase a gift card, you can either take use of Tulo Shop, or use your own API implementation:

Using Tulo Shop

If you're currently using Tulo Shop and would like to start selling gift cards on there, the process is very simple.

Simply, navigate to the package/campaign being sold in your Tulo Shop, and create an Adyen or Free payment option, following the prerequisites stated above. Once done, the altenative to gift a subscription will automatically appear within 24 hours in your Tulo Shop!

API implementation

First and foremost, the question you will have to ask yourself when making your own API implementation, is whether the gift cards should come at a price for your customers, or if they for example should be a yearly gift, from you to them. That gives you two different options:

Purchasing a gift card

In the majority of cases, you will most likely want your customers to pay for a gift card. This can be done through our Adyen API, and as such, allowing the majority of Adyen's payment options to be used.

  • If you are unfamiliar with Adyen and are just getting started, you can read more here.
  • If you are experienced with Adyen and our APIs, you can head straight in.

Free gift card

If you would like to offer a free gift card, for example in combination with campaign purchase rules, this can be done through our Account API, allowing the free payment option to be used.

  • If you are unfamiliar with our APIs and are just getting started, you can read more here.
  • If you are experienced with our API's, you can head straight in.

Regardless of which route you choose, you will notice these endpoints simply help you in placing an order, and will simply end up in a subscription, rather than a gift card for your customers to use.

This behavior can be changed via the voucher_purchase parameter, available for both of the endpoints above. This parameter is described in further detail for the Account API here and for the Adyen API here.

How to redeem a gift card

Once a gift card has been purchased, the customer who has purchased the gift card will receive an email with the gift card code, as well as a link to where the gift card code can be redeemed. It is then simply a matter of the customer sharing this code as well as a link to whoever they have in mind, and the recipient will be able to redeem the gift card.

Lifespan of a gift card

Days of access

Once the gift card has been redeemed, the recipient will gain limited access. The amount of days, weeks, months, or years that the recipient has access to is decided by the given payment period when performing the gift card purchase. Once a gift card has been purchased, the days of access cannot be changed.

Expire date

A gift card can and will expire, regardless if it is given away or not. The date that the gift card will expire can be configured by the implementing application, by setting the voucher_details.expire_date property when performing the gift card purchase. Once a gift card has been purchased, the expiry date cannot be changed.

Viewing purchased gift cards

Once a customer has purchased one or more gift cards, these can be viewed by simply navigating to the customer view in PAP, and selecting "Gift cards" in the left-hand menu.

Furthermore, you can also search for purchased and/or redeemed gift cards by simply navigating to PAP => Customer service => Gift card search.