Gift card
Prepaid balance someone buys for someone else: the recipient enters a code at checkout and it pays for the order like cash.
See it
What it is
A gift card is prepaid money for your store. Someone buys a balance, a code is issued (emailed as a digital card or printed on a physical one), and whoever holds that code enters it at checkout to pay for an order. Mechanically it behaves like cash, not like a promotion: it applies after tax and shipping, it can cover an order only partway, and the unspent remainder stays on the code for next time.
Reach for it when the buyer is not the wearer: holidays, birthdays, corporate gifting, and any catalog with sizing or taste risk. Good implementations let the buyer pick an amount and a delivery date, write a message, and send it straight to the recipient's inbox on Christmas morning rather than to their own.
Two traps. First, a gift card is not revenue when you sell it, it is a liability on your books until it is redeemed, and accountants care about this a lot. Second, expiry is regulated and the rules are local: US federal law under the CARD Act generally sets a five-year floor on gift certificates and store gift cards, Australia generally requires at least three years, the UK has no equivalent general minimum, and the EU varies country by country. So do not copy someone else's 'expires in 12 months' policy or someone else's five-year one either: check the jurisdictions you actually sell into, and store an expiry policy per issuing region rather than one global setting. Also treat the code like a password: validate server-side, rate limit guessing, and never let the balance be checked by brute force.
Ask AI for it
Add gift cards to this store. Build a gift card product page with preset denominations (25, 50, 100) plus a custom amount field, recipient name and email, an optional personal message, a scheduled send date, and a live preview of the card design. On purchase, generate a unique redemption code, email a digital card to the recipient on the chosen date, and treat the balance as a liability, not revenue. At checkout, add a 'Gift card or store credit' field that validates the code server-side, applies it after tax and shipping, supports partial redemption with the remainder kept on the code, and shows the leftover balance in the order summary. Rate limit code lookups. Model expiry as a per-region policy resolved from the issuing jurisdiction rather than one hard-coded duration, default to no expiry when no policy matches, and surface any expiry date on the card, in the email, and on the balance-check screen.