Brainerce HelpHow a customer redeems a gift card
What happens when a shopper pays with a gift voucher at checkout, how part payment works, why a code is refused, and why your website may not show the box at all.
A customer spends a gift card by typing its code at checkout. This article covers what they see, what Brainerce does with the money, and the handful of reasons a perfectly good code gets turned away.
Gift cards are still in rollout and start switched off for every store. See the gift cards overview for what that means for you today.
Your website has to show the gift-card box
Brainerce accepting a gift card and your website offering a place to type one are two different things. The field lives on your storefront, and someone has to build it, exactly like a coupon field or an address book.
If a customer says "there is nowhere to enter my gift card", check your website before you check the card. See a feature you turned on is not showing on your website.
A customer cannot buy a gift card on your website either, no matter how it is built. There is no gift-card product and no purchase flow. Every card is issued by you, by hand, from the dashboard. See Issue a gift card.
What the customer sees
- The shopper enters their code in the gift-card field at checkout.
- Brainerce reserves the amount on the card straight away, so nobody else can spend it while they finish paying.
- The order total does not change. The gift card pays part of it, and the amount still due goes down instead.
- They pay whatever is left by card. If the gift card covers the whole order, nothing more is due and no payment provider is involved at all.
- The card is only actually debited when the order is created. If the shopper walks away, the reservation is released and the money is back on the card.
They can also remove the gift card again before paying, which gives the value straight back.
Part payment, and change
- Card smaller than the basket? It pays what it can, and the customer pays the rest with their normal payment method. A ₪200 card against a ₪500 order leaves ₪300 to pay.
- Card bigger than the basket? Only what the order needs is taken. A ₪500 card against a ₪200 order leaves ₪300 on the card for next time.
- Never any change in cash. A gift card is never paid out, refunded to a bank card, or converted to money. Leftover value stays on the card.
Tax is charged on the full amount
A gift card is a means of payment, not a discount, so VAT and every other tax are calculated on the full order value before the card is applied. A ₪500 order paid entirely with a ₪500 gift card still carries tax on ₪500.
This is the opposite of a coupon, which reduces the taxable amount. If your accounting treats the two the same way, it is wrong for one of them.
A gift card and a coupon can be used together
They do different jobs, so they do not compete. The coupon comes off the total first, then the gift card pays against whatever is left, then the customer pays the remainder. Each one appears separately in the order summary.
Why a gift card code is refused at checkout
The customer always sees the same message, whatever the reason: "That gift card code cannot be used on this order."
That is deliberate and it will not be changed. A gift-card code is cash to whoever holds it, so telling an anonymous visitor the difference between "no such code" and "that code exists but is out of money" would hand a thief a way to hunt for live codes by trial and error.
The consequence for you: the customer cannot self-diagnose, and neither can your website. You have to look. Find the card on Marketing → Gift cards by its last four digits or the recipient email, open it, and check against this list:
| What you see on the card | What happened |
|---|---|
| Status is Disabled | Somebody switched it off. Reactivate it. |
| Status is Revoked | It was replaced by a re-issue. The customer is holding a dead code. Find the replacement card. |
| Balance is zero | Fully spent. The movement history shows on which orders. |
| Balance is fine but Spendable is lower | Value is held by a checkout in progress, possibly the customer's own earlier attempt. It clears on its own. |
| Currency is not the currency of the order | A card can only pay in its own currency, and Brainerce never converts. See below. |
| Card has an expiry in the past | Expired cards are refused. Cards issued from the dashboard have no expiry, so this is rare. |
And two causes that are not about the card at all:
- A typo. The customer mistyped it. Compare the last four digits on screen with the ones on the card in your list.
- The order is already fully paid, for example by another gift card, so there is nothing left for this one to pay.
A gift card can only pay in its own currency
There is no currency conversion, anywhere. A card issued in shekels can only pay an order priced in shekels. Put it against an order in dollars and it is refused with the same generic message as any other refusal.
This matters if you sell in more than one currency. A customer who moves between your currencies effectively has store credit that only works in one of them, and nothing on your website will explain that to them. Say it in the message you send with the card.
What's next?
- Gift card liability and refunds covers what happens after the order, including refunds.
- Manage gift cards covers finding a card and reading its history.
Manage gift cards
Find a card, read its history, adjust a balance, disable and reactivate, re-issue a lost code, work in bulk, and export the list. Plus why a gift card can never be deleted.
Gift card liability and refunds
The outstanding liability figure your accountant asks for at month end, what "held right now" means, and what happens when you refund an order that was paid with a gift voucher.