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Gift card

Buy stored-value gift cards in bulk once, then hand them out to your customers one at a time — as a reward, a refund, a thank-you, or an incentive.

A gift card is a fixed-value card (a $25 card, a $50 card) that a customer receives and redeems with a brand. With Paylode you don't buy cards one purchase at a time; you order a batch into a pool you own, and then draw individual cards from that pool whenever you need to give one out. The pool is your inventory; each card you hand out draws it down by one.

This is a different rhythm from perks and coupons. A perk points a customer at a deal; a gift card is the value, and you pay for it up front. That's why the flow has an explicit purchase step and why you manage inventory over time.

How it works​

There are four moving parts, in order:

  1. Marketplace — the catalog of gift card offers available to you. Each offer is a brand (a coffee chain, a retailer) with one or more purchasable contracts.
  2. Order — you place an order against a contract to fund a pool with cards of a chosen denomination and quantity.
  3. Pool — your funded inventory of cards, grouped by denomination and currency. You draw from it over time.
  4. Reward link — how a single card actually reaches a person: a one-time link you share that carries one reserved card. See reward link.

Offers and contracts​

An offer is the brand-level entry in the marketplace — its title, description, brand name, logo, and banner. Each offer carries one or more contracts. A contract is one purchasable variant of that offer, and it's the thing you actually order against. A contract tells you everything you need to decide and buy:

  • Discount — the percentage off face value you pay. A 2.5% discount means a $100 card costs you $97.50.
  • Denominations — which values you can buy, as a min/max range, a fixed set ([10, 25, 50, 100]), or both.
  • Currency — the currency the card is denominated in. Gift cards are offered in US dollars today, with Canadian dollars where available for a given offer.
  • Countries — the markets the contract serves, so you can surface only the cards relevant to a customer's region.
  • Redemption info and terms — how the card is redeemed and the fine print; different contracts on the same offer can differ here.

An offer may have several contracts — different countries, currencies, or denomination ranges — and you pick exactly one contract by id when you order.

Currency and markets​

Card denominations are always in the contract's currency. The supported set is US dollars and Canadian dollars; which are available depends on the offer and your market.

Where you work with it​

You browse and buy gift cards in the Paylode admin app. The gift-card marketplace there shows every offer available to you — the brand, its imagery, the redemption terms, and each purchasable contract with its denominations, currency, and the discount off face value you pay. You pick a contract, choose quantity and denomination, see your price, and place the order; the cards land in your pool. The end-to-end walkthrough is Order gift cards.

The API's role starts after the inventory exists: generating reward links from a pool at scale — see Share gift-card reward links.

  • Gift Cards overview — what the product does and how this page fits it.
  • Reward link — how a single card from your pool reaches a person.
  • Boost — reward journeys that hand out rewards after a customer acts.
  • Wallet — the account balance your pool is funded from.