It’s been interesting looking at the systems behind gift cards, gift vouchers and generally sending some kind of credit to someone else through your website. It looks like your main options for allowing people to order gift vouchers or cards through your website are:
- They fill in a custom form (built using a custom form builder like Typeform) and then have someone use Word, Canva or Photoshop to create a voucher that is emailed to the customer. The owner is often using a manual random gift voucher number generator.
- They order a voucher that has been set up as a product in an online store. The owner of the store then uses the order number to enter into their POS system to redeem, if redeeming in-person.
- They order a gift card through a website builder like Weebly and have the voucher sent automatically to the gift recipient. The voucher can then only be redeemable online for purchases in their online store. Offline purchases aren’t possible.
- Use a gift voucher management software system. This is a step up from a gift voucher creator software system or a gift voucher generator as this software will be accessible via a link or a widget on your website and will process the voucher for you and either email or post it to the gift recipient. The downside to this software is that most of the systems are set up for larger hotel chains, theme parks etc so the larger upfront costs don’t work for smaller stores. Some of the more expensive options include Gift Voucher Manager, Voucher Pro, Staah, Lightrail, The Gift Card Cafe and GiftPro. The only three sites I found with transparent pricing were VoucherCart ($55 + 3% transaction fee), Gift Up (3.49% transaction fee) and VoucherConnect (5% transaction fee). Out of these three, I’m voting on Vouchercart & Gift Up at the moment due to the checkout experience.
