Mercato

Gift cards

Mercato → Gift cards. Visitors to your website buy gift cards for other people, and you can issue one yourself, for example instead of a refund. A gift card is money your store owes until it is spent. It never expires.

Sell gift cards on your website

1. Open Gift cards (owners and admins change this).
2. Under Selling gift cards on your website, tick Visitors can buy gift cards on the websites that sell this store.
3. Set Amounts to choose from (up to 6, such as 25, 50, 100), and tick Or any amount in a range to let visitors type their own between Lowest and Highest.
4. Choose Save.

Until you change them, the amounts are $25, $50 and $100, or any amount from $10 to $500. You can change them to anything from $5.00 to $2,000.00, the limits for every card. A website sells them through its own pages, with your store key (see Sell on your website): if an online store built in VeraGen has no gift card page yet, ask for one with Ask for a change… in its Build step. Buying one needs online payments: until Stripe is connected in Payouts & payments, the website says gift cards cannot be bought online yet, and you can still issue them by hand.

What the buyer and the recipient see

The buyer chooses an amount, enters the recipient's name and email, an optional message, and whether to send it now or on a day, then pays on the checkout page.

• The card is made only when the payment is confirmed. A checkout nobody pays ends after 30 minutes.
• One buyer email can start at most 10 gift card purchases an hour, and a store 100, so a stolen card cannot be turned into gift cards in bulk.
• The recipient is emailed the card from your store, with the subject "Your $50.00 gift card from" and your store's name: the amount, the message, the code, and a link to a page that shows what is left on it. Web addresses typed into the buyer's name or message are taken out of the email. A card for a later day is emailed at 9:00 AM on that day, in the store's timezone (Settings).
• The buyer is emailed a receipt. It says when the card goes and gives its last 4 characters, not the code.
• The buyer becomes a Thrive contact, like any other customer.

Spending a gift card

• On your website: the customer enters the code at checkout. The card pays all of the order, or part of it with the rest by card. A card paying part of an order is held for that order while the customer pays; if they leave without paying, the money goes back onto the card.
• On an invoice: the invoice's pay link offers Have a gift card? when your store has gift cards. The card pays what it can; the rest stays to pay.
• One gift card per checkout. A card pays whole cents and never goes below zero, even when two people try to use it at the same moment, and it never pays an invoice more than it owes.
• If a card payment on an invoice arrives after a gift card already paid part of it, what the gift card paid goes back onto the gift card, and the invoice's history says so.
• Tax is charged on what a card buys, as usual. A gift card is a way of paying, not a discount, so it does not change an order's tax.

Issue one by hand

1. In Gift cards, choose Issue a gift card (owners and admins).
2. Enter the Amount, choose Why (a refund, a promotion, goodwill, other), and add a Note only you see.
3. Add their name and email and a message, then choose Email it now, Email it on a day, or I'll hand it over (show me the code).
4. Choose Issue gift card.

When you hand it over, the code is shown once, on the next screen. Copy it then: Mercato keeps only its last 4 characters.

Test gift cards

A card bought with a test payment (including a payment made in Stripe's test mode), or issued while online payments are in test mode, is marked TEST. Test mode means either a test provider or Stripe's test mode; both are treated the same. A test card is not money: it can only be spent while payments are in test mode, and a real card cannot be spent while they are. The customer portal shows a customer only the cards of the store's present mode.

A card's page

Open a card from the list (search by its last 4, a name or an email) to see what is left on it, who it is for and from, its message, its emails, and its History: bought or issued, spent (with the order or invoice), returned, voided.

Refunds

A refund goes back the way the money came. On an order or an invoice paid partly by gift card, the part paid by card goes back to that card first, then the rest goes back onto the gift card. A void gift card cannot take money back: refund that part outside Mercato.

In your accounts

A gift card sold is money you owe, not money earned. The Overview leaves gift card sales out of Money in and shows them in a Gift cards panel: what is owed on cards, and what was sold and spent in the period. A card counts in Money in when it is spent.

In Payouts & payments → Export for your accountant:

• Xero sales invoices and QuickBooks Online invoices: each gift card sold is a document of its own, GC- and 8 characters, on your gift card account, with no tax. Set the account in Settings → Accounting export: Xero gift card account (835 until you change it; use a liability account from your chart of accounts) and QuickBooks gift card product/service (Gift card; map it to a liability account in QuickBooks).
• Payments and refunds: a card spent on an order or invoice is a payment from the gift card account.
• Gift cards: every card's movements: sold, issued by hand (no money in), spent, returned to the card, voided.

A card issued by hand brings no money in, so it appears only in the gift cards file: record it in your books as your accountant advises. Gift cards never expire and carry no fees; ask your accountant how long-unused balances are treated where you are.

Who can do what

• Anyone who can open the project sees Gift cards and every card's page (never a code).
• Owners and admins switch selling on, issue, resend and void cards.