Digital gift cards: a guide for shops and service businesses

In December gift cards are sold at the counter in the middle of the rush. A paper card is written by hand, its number noted in a notebook, and in late spring someone brings in a card nobody remembers selling. A digital gift card is sold online, delivered by email and redeemed at the till with one scan. This guide explains how it works in Solmio.

A gift card is a till product

In Solmio a gift card is an eVoucher that contains a till product. You create products in the till such as Gift card €25, €50 and €100. Price and VAT come from the till, as in all Solmio online shops.

A gift card can also contain a service or a product, for example a massage or a lunch. One QR code can redeem several products, and a gift card can hold more than one of the same product. From the gift card's link the customer sees what has already been used.

The customer buys online

Gift cards are sold in the voucher shop. The customer chooses a gift card, pays online and gets it by email as a QR code. The gift card can be saved to Apple or Google Wallet, so it travels on the phone.

The shop shows your logo and colours. You can also add instructions telling how the gift card is used. The online shop sells also when your business is closed.

Companies buy large batches

A company wants to give its staff a gift card for Christmas. With an eVoucher batch you create 1–10,000 gift cards at once. Recipients can be pasted from Excel or imported from a CSV file, and the gift cards go straight to each person by email or WhatsApp.

The company's name shows on the gift card and at the till as the owner. When you create a pending invoice for the batch, the invoice goes out as a combined invoice from the portal's Invoicing page. The batch page shows how many gift cards have been redeemed, and you resend failed ones with one button.

A small batch can also be created in a chat with Ailo. Give the product and the recipients, and Ailo prepares the sending. The gift cards go out only when you approve it.

Redemption at the till

The customer shows the QR code and the till reads it. Redemption is checked and recorded, so the same gift card can't be used twice. An expired gift card isn't accepted.

The validity start and end are set for the gift card. If no end date is set, the gift card doesn't expire.

The money shows in the right place

A gift card paid online is a sale on the day of purchase. A gift card sold on invoice is recorded as a sale when it is invoiced. When the gift card is redeemed at the till, redemption is recorded on the eVoucher payment method at 0 euros, so the same money doesn't show in sales twice.

The eVoucher report shows redemptions as quantities and euros by period, product, point of sale or owner. The report can be exported to Excel. Go through the accounting treatment of gift cards with your accountant before the first sale.

Getting started

1. Create gift card products in the till with the right prices and VAT rates.
2. Open a voucher shop and add the gift cards to the consumer channel.
3. Connect online payments through Viva or Paytrail.
4. Decide the validity and write instructions for the customer.
5. Make a test purchase and redeem the gift card at the till before sharing the link.

In service businesses the gift card shop is created when booking is set up. Read more in the guide Bookings and POS together.

Let's look at your gift cards together

In a demo we look at what kind of gift cards you sell, to whom and where they are redeemed.

See the voucher and gift card shop or tell us how you sell gift cards now.