Gift Cards & Store Credit: Sell Once, Redeem Anywhere

Gift cards are prepaid revenue and a foot-traffic engine — the guest pays today and brings a friend back tomorrow. The difference between a gift-card program that prints money and one that leaks it is whether every card is tracked as a liability from sale to redemption.

Sell it like a product, track it like a liability

• Sell physical or digital cards at any register — the sale records unearned revenue, not a completed sale, until the card is redeemed.
• Let guests check balances at the terminal or from a receipt lookup so staff never guess at remaining value.
• Handle partial redemptions cleanly: a $50 card against a $32 check leaves $18 on the card, not a rounding error in your drawer.

Store credit keeps the sale in-house

• Issue store credit for returns without a receipt instead of losing the sale to a cash refund — the money stays with your business.
• Tie credit to the customer record so it survives a lost receipt and can't be passed around like cash.
• Set expiry and minimum-spend rules up front so credit drives repeat visits instead of sitting forgotten.

Reconcile redemptions at close

1. Match every redemption against its original card sale before closing the day.
2. Confirm unredeemed balances roll forward as outstanding liability — never as revenue.
3. Export the day's card activity with your sales so accountants see issuance, redemption, and breakage separately.

Use Swagger UI or OpenAPI for the current gift card, balance, and store-credit request shapes.