What’s new

When a customer pays for an order with a Cardivo gift card and you later refund that order, the amount they used now goes back on their gift card automatically. Until now, the gift card amount stayed spent after a refund, so putting it back on the card was a separate job that required you to get in touch with Cardivo support. Now Cardivo automatically detects the refund from your connected platforms including Shopify, WooCommerce, Stripe Checkout, and Eventbrite and restores the balance for you, so your customer can use their gift card again straight away.

There’s nothing to switch on. It works on all your connected redemption channels today. If you use WooCommerce, you’ll just need to update to the latest version of our plugin (0.7 or higher).

How it works on each channel:

• Shopify: when you refund an order back to the gift card in Shopify, that amount goes back on the Cardivo gift card. This works for full and partial refunds.
• WooCommerce: when you fully refund an order that used a gift card, the gift card amount used on that order is restored. Partial refunds don’t change the gift card balance. This needs version 0.7 of our WordPress plugin, which you can download here.
• Stripe Checkout and payment links: when a one-time payment that used a gift card is fully refunded in Stripe, the gift card amount is restored. Gift cards used on subscriptions aren’t included, because their balance moves to the customer’s Stripe credit balance and new subscriptions would use that. Reach out to us if you need this adjusted.
• Eventbrite: when you refund the whole order, or the ticket the gift card was used on, the gift card amount goes back on the card.

The refund shows in the transaction history on the gift card page, as “+$60 balance refunded via Shopify” for example, with the original redemption kept underneath so you and your customer can see exactly what happened. If the gift card had been fully used, it moves from a Completed status back to Active. The new balance is synced across every channel you use, so the gift card can be redeemed anywhere again.

A small but useful quality of live improvement to make Cardivo work more seamlessly and proactively for your business while reducing busy-work for you.

Your Cardivo gift cards can now be redeemed on your Eventbrite events. If you sell tickets to events, workshops or classes on Eventbrite, your customers can use their Cardivo gift card right in the Eventbrite checkout. They just enter their gift card number in the promo code field. This is in addition to all the redemption channels Cardivo already supports – letting you bring your gift cards with you seamlessly as your business evolves and changes.

Once you connect your Eventbrite account, Cardivo takes care of the rest. Your gift cards are added to all of your upcoming Eventbrite events in the same currency, and any new event you publish gets them automatically, so there’s nothing to set up event by event. Each redemption is recorded on the gift card in your Cardivo dashboard, along with the event and Eventbrite order, and the remaining balance updates everywhere you accept Cardivo gift cards, including Shopify, WooCommerce and Stripe Checkout. This makes multi-channel redemption seamless for you and your customers.

A few things worth knowing:

👉 Leftover balances stay on the gift card
If a ticket costs less than the gift card balance, the rest can be used on a later order, on Eventbrite or anywhere else you accept Cardivo gift cards.

👉 One ticket per gift card per order
A gift card checkout only supports one ticket – this is an Eventbrite limitation.

👉 Multiple currencies are automatically handled – no manual work needed
A gift card works on any of your events in the same currency, so EUR gift cards work on EUR events only, USD gift cards on USD events, etc.

👉 Expiry and status carry over
Expired, frozen and fully used gift cards stop working on Eventbrite automatically just like all other redemption channels

👉  Refunds automatically restore the balance
If you refund an Eventbrite order (or the ticket) that used a gift card, the amount goes back onto the gift card automatically and the gift card status updates as needed too.

To get started, follow these easy step-by-step instructions. Takes about 60 seconds to connect, and you can disconnect any time.

Your Gift Cards page now shows the average value of the gift cards you’ve sold, right alongside your other stats. It’s a quick way to see what customers typically spend on a gift card, which is handy when you’re choosing the purchase amounts on your sales page or the amount shown on gift card previews.

The average uses each gift card’s value and is shown in your account’s default currency, with gift cards sold in other currencies converted at the exchange rates of the purchase date so they all count. It updates automatically every time a new gift card is purchased. To see it, head to your Cardivo dashboard and look for “Average gift card value” next to “Value not yet redeemed”.

Following on from our automated email checks, Cardivo now confirms that every gift card email actually reaches the recipient’s inbox. Each time a gift card email goes out, we track its delivery with our email provider, so the status in your dashboard shows what really happened to the email, not just that it was sent. This ensures we are always showing you the most accurate and precise status. Gift cards only show as “active” once we have confirmed successful delivery.

A brief “Sending” status while we confirm

Right after a gift card email is sent, the gift card shows as Sending while we confirm delivery. You’ll rarely see this though, as it typically lasts anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes. Once delivery is confirmed, the status changes to Active.

Undelivered emails are flagged automatically

If the email bounces, for example because the address doesn’t exist or the mailbox is rejecting mail temporarily (because it’s full or because of organisation email settings), the gift card is marked Undelivered straight away. The gift card page shows a banner explaining what happened, with a link to update the recipient’s email. Once you save the new address, we re-send the gift card and confirm delivery again. The gift card and its full balance are safe the whole time.

Buyers only hear “delivered” once it’s true

For gift cards scheduled for a future date, the buyer’s delivery confirmation email now goes out only after we’ve confirmed the gift card reached the recipient, not just when it was sent. If the buyer’s own email address bounces, that’s flagged on the gift card page too, so you know they won’t get their confirmations and can update their address.

There’s nothing to set up. This works on every gift card, including ones you re-send or send early from your dashboard.

When someone buys a gift card, we now automatically and invisibly check the recipient and sender email addresses for typos, potential delivery issues and a range of other checks to validate the recipient and sender emails can receive emails. This is done in the background, without any disruption or impact on the checkout flow.

In instances where the email a buyer enters for the recipient (or themselves) is flagged as invalid, we ask customers to check it and if needed, fix it. This happens after the gift card payment is successfully completed so it has no negative impact on conversion rates but helps catch potentially incorrect emails immediately and automatically.

This is what the gift card buyer will see when an email is flagged as invalid:

If the recipient email is flagged as invalid:

If the sender’s email is flagged as invalid:

In rare cases where both the sender and recipient emails are invalid, they will see both flows above sequentially.

In all cases, this flow is triggered and shown only if an email is detected to be invalid or can’t receive emails for some other reason (inbox storage full, etc) and only after the purchase step is completed on the gift card purchase page. Once they complete this flow, buyers are then shown the confirmation page – the default one we have or a custom one you have set.

This flow doesn’t affect payment collection. There is no change or impact to the checkout. For all customers, once they submit their payment information, the payment is immediately processed with no delays, even if the email is invalid. This validation flow triggers after they have successfully paid.

Because these are automated checks, they can result in valid emails being flagged incorrectly very occasionally. Gift card buyers are given the option to say “This is correct” which overrides the automated check and marks the email as valid immediately.

In instances where an email is flagged as invalid but the buyers abandon this flow without updating the email, or the actual delivery of the gift card email (to the recipient) or payment confirmation email (to the sender) fail, the “invalid email” status will be clearly indicated in your Cardivo admin dashboard and on the gift card page.

From there, you can click on the “Fix it” link and enter the correct email, which will then retry delivery of either the gift card email to recipients or payment confirmation to senders. This almost fully automates yet another component of your gift card offering, keeping you free to do higher value work 🙌

The Gift Card Redeemed trigger now available in our Zapier app enables many new workflows like updating your CRM or other systems, sending customers a custom email thanking them for their purchase, updating them with their remaining balance for partial redemptions, letting internal admins know on slack, and much more. This trigger works with partial and full redemptions.

The trigger runs wherever a gift card redemption happens on any of your sales channels – on your Shopify or WooCommerce store, through Stripe checkout pages and subscriptions, on Eventbrite, on your payment plans, through our redemption API, or when you redeem a gift card manually from your Cardivo dashboard.

A few ideas to get started

• Post a message in Slack or teams when a gift card is used, with the amount redeemed and the balance left
• Add each redemption to a Google Sheet to make reconciliation and bookkeeping easier
• Update the customer’s record in your CRM or email marketing tool
• Send the recipient a follow-up after a partial redemption to let them know how much they still have to spend
• Thank customers for their purchase once a gift card is redeemed

What’s included

Each redemption sends the amount redeemed, the remaining balance, the original gift card value, the currency, the gift card number and a link to the gift card, whether it was a full or partial redemption, where it was redeemed, the recipient’s name and email, the redemption date and expiry date, and the order or payment ID from your store or Stripe where there is one.

How to set it up

In Zapier, create a new Zap, choose Cardivo as the trigger app and pick Gift Card Redeemed as the trigger event. Connect your Cardivo account, test the trigger, then add the action you want to happen in your other app.

Need help setting up a workflow? Just ask us via the chat icon 💬

You can now fine-tune each gift card design to get the colors just right. Till now, all default elements on a gift card appeared in white. This worked well for darker images but less so for light ones. You can now customize the color of default elements for all gift cards on your account or fine-tune them for each specific design. To try this out, go to your gift card settings and you’ll see new options to edit colors.

Sometimes the sender of a gift card incorrectly enters the wrong email address for the recipient, causing it to remain undelivered. This is reflected in your Cardivo dashboard with an UNDELIVERED status but required you to contact support to assist with changing this and re-sending the gift card email. This can now be done easily via your admin dashboard. For any gift cards with an undelivered status, you will see a new option in the more menu next to it to “Change recipient email” and from there you can enter the updated email you’ve gotten from the sender. Once you save it, we’ll immediately try re-delivering it and the status will update to “Active” once it’s delivered.

Gift cards purchased via your Cardivo sales page can now be redeemed on your Shopify store. This makes it easy to offer your customers gift cards that are redeemable across everywhere you do business. Many businesses have a Shopify store, and offer other services like courses, events or more. Using Cardivo for your gift cards gives you and your customers the benefit of easy redemptions across everything you offer.

You can now offer one gift card option that can be redeemed almost anywhere and is platform-agnostic, giving you ultimate flexibility now and in the future. When redeeming on Shopify, your customers get the benefit of a fully native redemption experience directly in the Shopify checkout and redemptions are automatically synced in real time to their Cardivo gift card. This makes multi-channel redemption seamless for you and your customers.

Try our live Shopify demo here. To complete the demo checkout flow, send yourself a demo gift card first (for US$2,000 or less), then you can use that during checkout on the demo store. To get started with Shopify redemptions on your own store, it’s a simple process outlined step by step here, and takes about 10 minutes to set up. If you need a hand, we’re here to help.

The purchase amount shown on gift card previews on your sales page defaulted to 100 – you can now customize this to better suit your business and your currency. In your gift card settings, you can now set this to any amount you want to better reflect the typical gift card amounts for your business. This is especially useful if you sell higher value products or services. This is a small but important enhancement to make Cardivo an even better experience for you and your customers. To change the preview amount shown on your gift cards, just head over to gift card settings and you’ll see a new field for this.

If you’re a merchant, your customers can now buy your gift cards using Cash App as the payment method.
With over 57 million active users, Cash App is very popular in the U.S. Now these users can pay with Cash App when buying your gift cards. Cardivo now supports Cash App Pay for gift card purchases (for businesses based in the US). If you have Cash App Pay set to ON in your Stripe payment method settings (this is on by default in Stripe), your customers will now see and can choose to complete payment using Cash App Pay. When available, Cash App Pay will show like this:

Cardivo fees for Cash App Pay are the same as any other payments. Stripe processing fees for Cash App Pay are also the same as card payments so there is no difference in fees involved.

The Cardivo Gift Card Redemption API makes it easy to use Cardivo as your gift card platform while retaining full control over where and how you allow gift card redemptions. You can now use our redemption API to allow your gift card to be redeemed anywhere you want – whether it’s a custom site, web app, iOS or Android app. This gives you full control over the gift card redemption experience as well as letting your gift card holders check their balance. Gift cards can be redeemed partly or in full, and gift card balances can be checked using the API.

It’s important to note that the gift card purchase and sending experience is still handled via your Cardivo sales page and not via the API. The API is focused purely on redemption.

👉 To get started, create your free Cardivo account and switch this on the API in integration settings.

📋 You can also check out the API documentation here. The Cardivo API is in early access. Core functions work reliably but the documentation is limited and has rough edges.

Just reach out with any questions via the chat icon and we’d be happy to help.

For businesses where specific gift card amounts correspond to a specific product or service, or you want to clarify what each amount can get the recipient, having labels next to gift card amounts can help add context for the buyer. They can even contribute to a higher gift card amount being purchased since buyers have a better understanding of what their gift card can get their recipient.

Labels can be useful to show different tiers or how much of your service or product would be covered by a certain amount. Eg: If you sell a $1,000 glamping experience, you could add four pre-set amounts for $250, $500, $1,000 and $5,000 and add labels like this:

$250     Funds a portion of their experience

$500     Funds 50% of the experience

$1,000  One full night’s experience with all inclusions

$5,000  A week-long deluxe experience they’ll cherish forever 👌 ❤️

You can include emoji in the labels too to make them pop! At the moment you can add up to 4 labels for 4 pre-set or shortcut amounts. This function works if you are limiting gift card purchases to specific amounts only or if you allow custom amounts as well.

You can see and change this setting in your Cardivo dashboard via the gift card settings page.

Before now, gift cards would only apply to the first payment in a Stripe subscription. Now the full gift card balance is redeemed when applied to a subscription on your Stripe payment / checkout links. If a customer applies a gift card that has a higher balance than the first payment of the subscription, the remaining balance is automatically applied as a credit balance to the customer’s record in Stripe. This means all future subscription charges are automatically adjusted till the gift card balance is fully used, after which the payments switch back to the payment method on file. This is automatically enabled and works with no further action needed from you.

In your Stripe account, you will see relevant metadata on the customer and subscription record and this will be shown as a separate line item on the gift card page.

Once the credit balance is applied in Stripe, the gift card balance becomes zero immediately. Cardivo automatically handles scenarios where a gift card might be used for a one-off payment first, and then subsequently applied to a subscription.

Buy yourself a demo gift card, then redeem it at this demo link to see it in action.

We’ve improved the experience to view and choose a design on your gift card sales page to be more visually appealing and feel more natural. This new design adapts to a buyer’s device, allowing for designs to be viewed by swiping left and right on touch devices and using the mouse on computers. This also improves the experience when you have many designs to choose from and automatically adapts if you have just one or two designs. You can see this in action on our demo link here.

For some businesses, it makes sense to limit gift card purchases to specific amounts only. You might offer a few specific products, packages, subscriptions or services and you want to align gift card amounts to correspond to those. Till now, you could set a minimum purchase amount but couldn’t prevent buyers from manually inputting any gift card amount . Now, with a simple toggle, you can limit gift card purchases to between 1 and 4 pre-set amounts.

Supercharge your workflow by sending Cardivo data to over 7,000 other apps with Zapier – including Slack, Gmail, Google Sheets & more. At the moment, our Zapier app has one available trigger – when a gift card is purchased. We will be adding more triggers and actions over time.

Get started with Zapier here.

Using Stripe Checkout or Stripe Payment Links? You can now allow redemptions for Cardivo gift cards easily with one click. To see how it works, send yourself a demo gift card in USD here, then redeem it on our Stripe Checkout demo here.

To enable this, just switch the Stripe integration to ON in your Cardivo dashboard and follow the step by step instructions here. After that we’ll automatically sync gift card numbers with your Stripe account to allow redemptions on your Stripe checkout links.

You could always add your logo or business name on your Cardivo gift cards. Now you can customize the background image for each gift card, and add up to 6 custom designed gift cards. You can also show/hide any default designs, giving you more control and letting you have anything from 1 to 12 gift card designs available at any time.

To get started, just go to your gift card settings page in your Cardivo dashboard and follow the instructions.