How to start a gift card program for your business

If you sell to consumers, you should have a gift card program. The why is straightforward: you collect cash today for revenue you'll recognise later, you bring new customers into your business through the recipient channel, and the recipients commonly spend above the loaded card value when they redeem. The how is where most businesses get stuck.

This is a practical guide to launching a gift card program from zero. It covers the decisions that matter, the integrations to plan for, and the operational basics you'll need on day one. The examples reference Wrapped because that's the platform we know best, but the framing applies to any modern gift card platform.

Step 1: Decide what kinds of gift cards you'll sell

Before you pick a platform, decide what your program needs to support. Most businesses run some combination of:

• Cash gift cards — the default. A buyer loads a value, the recipient redeems it for any goods or services you sell.
• Experience vouchers — useful when a defined experience is more compelling than a dollar amount: a tasting menu, a hotel stay, a chef's table, a cellar-door tour. Often QR-coded with a redemption date.
• Store credit — not strictly a gift card, but it lives in the same ledger and uses the same plumbing. The biggest store credit win for most businesses is refund-to-credit — issuing credit instead of cash on returns, keeping revenue inside the business.

If you're not sure which you need, see our comparison: gift cards vs store credit vs experience vouchers.

Step 2: Choose digital, physical, or both

The cheapest and fastest start is digital-only — emailed gift cards with a code the recipient redeems online or via the POS. You can launch in days. Add physical cards if you have walk-in foot traffic, run gifting at retail-sale moments (point-of-sale impulse), or your brand benefits from a tactile artefact.

Physical cards have setup overhead: card design, print run, in-store activation hardware or process, distribution, expiry signage. Most businesses launch digital-first and add physical once the program is proven.

Step 3: Choose a gift card platform

Six things to evaluate when picking a platform:

1. Native integration with your POS and eCommerce. A platform that doesn't natively integrate with your stack is a deal-breaker — you'll spend more time reconciling balances than running the program. Ask whether the integration is "official", what fields sync, and whether redemption is real-time or batched.
2. Single balance ledger across channels. The card is sold once and redeemed once, no matter where the buyer or recipient is. Avoid platforms that maintain per-channel ledgers.
3. Branded customer experience. Storefront, gift card design, email templates, recipient delivery flow, Apple Wallet / Google Wallet support. The recipient experience is your brand impression on a customer who isn't yet a customer.
4. Liability reporting. You'll need this for finance close every month. Look for: total outstanding liability, breakdown by channel, vintage/cohort reporting, last-activity aging.
5. Security controls. Random high-entropy codes, encrypted storage, role-based permissions, two-factor authentication, audit logs, per-card suspend. See our guide on gift card fraud prevention.
6. Pricing model. Most platforms charge per activation. Match the included activation volume to your expected first-year volume; the per-overage rate matters too.

Step 4: Plan the operational basics

Before launch, lock in:

• Expiry policy. Required by law in most jurisdictions to be at least 1-3 years (US CARD Act, Australian Consumer Law, Canadian provincial law). See our regional summary in gift card expiry laws by country.
• Inactivity / dormancy fees. Heavily restricted or banned in most markets. Default to "no fees" unless you have specific need.
• Disclosures. Terms must be clear at the point of sale and on the card.
• Refund / cancellation policy. What happens if the buyer wants a refund before the recipient redeems? Most businesses allow refunds to original payment for a short window (e.g. 14 days) if the card is still unredeemed.
• Accounting treatment. Brief your finance team on deferred revenue, breakage, and reporting. See our accounting and liability guide.

Step 5: Go live and measure

Launch checklist:

• Connect POS and eCommerce integrations; test issue and redeem on each.
• Publish the gift card storefront (or add gift card products to your existing store).
• Configure email templates with your branding and a recipient experience you'd be happy to receive.
• Surface the gift card option on your website navigation, in the checkout flow, and on key marketing pages.
• Brief in-store staff on selling and redeeming gift cards in the POS.
• Run a "soft launch" with a small batch of cards (test cards, employee gifts, friend-of-the-business goodwill) to validate the end-to-end flow before promoting publicly.

Metrics worth tracking from day one: gift card revenue (cash collected), redemption rate, time-to-redemption, average spend at redemption (vs the loaded value), and channel split. Most programs see 70-90% redemption within the first 6-12 months; the un-redeemed remainder eventually becomes breakage revenue per accounting standards.

Step 6: Grow the program

Once the basics are live, the program compounds with marketing tactics:

• Seasonal promotions. Bonus value campaigns ("buy a $100 gift card, get $20 free") around major gifting moments — Christmas, Mother's/Father's Day, Valentine's.
• Corporate / B2B sales. Bulk gift card orders for employee rewards, client gifts, partner programs. See our corporate gift cards page.
• Marketing automation. Trigger gift card emails based on customer behaviour — first-purchase thank-you, win-back campaigns, anniversary rewards.
• Refund-to-credit. Convert returns into store credit instead of cash refunds. Tends to retain revenue and lift average transaction value.

The Takeaway

A gift card program is one of the highest-leverage product additions you can make as a retailer or hospitality operator. The platform you pick determines whether the program scales cleanly across channels or becomes a reconciliation headache. Choose for native integrations, a single canonical ledger, branded customer experience, and finance-grade reporting. Start digital, prove value, then add physical cards and B2B if it fits.

If you'd like to walk through what a Wrapped program would look like for your business, start a 14-day free trial or book a demo.