Complete guide to gift cards in WooCommerce

Does WooCommerce have gift cards built in?

No. A standard WooCommerce install gives you coupons under Marketing > Coupons, and nothing else in the gift card category. Store owners sometimes try to sell a "gift card" by creating a product and manually emailing a coupon code after each order, but that workaround breaks quickly.

• No stored balance. A fixed cart coupon worth $50 used on a $30 order does not keep the remaining $20 for later. The leftover value is simply lost.
• No recipient delivery. The buyer cannot enter a recipient's name, email or personal message, so every card has to be sent by hand.
• No scheduling. There is no way to have a birthday card arrive on the birthday instead of the day it was bought.
• No tracking. You cannot see how many cards are active, how much value is outstanding, or how much has been redeemed.

A gift card plugin fills all four gaps. It adds a dedicated gift card product type, creates a code automatically when the order is paid, stores the balance against that code, and applies it at checkout like any other credit.

Why gift cards are worth selling

Think about a shopper on your site in late November. They like your products but have no idea which size or color their sister wants. Without a gift card option, they leave. With one, you make the sale today and gain a second customer when the recipient redeems it.

That second customer is the real value. The recipient is usually someone who has never shopped with you, and they arrive with money already committed to your store. Most of them also spend beyond the card: research from Capital One Shopping found that 61% of people redeeming a gift card spend more than its balance.

Gift cards also help cash flow. You are paid upfront, there is no stock to hold for a digital card, and nothing can sell out or ship late, which makes them a safe last-minute product for holidays, Mother's Day, graduations and birthdays.

A gift card turns one purchase into two customer relationships: the buyer today and the recipient on redemption.

Gift card vs coupon vs voucher vs store credit

These terms get used interchangeably, but they behave differently at checkout and in your books. Getting the difference right affects your reporting, your tax setup and how you word your terms.

The key accounting point: a coupon reduces your revenue, while a gift card is money you have already received for goods you have not yet delivered. That is why accountants usually treat unredeemed gift card value as a liability rather than a sale.

Digital or physical gift cards?

Most stores start with digital cards because they cost nothing to fulfil and can be delivered instantly. Physical cards still have a place: some buyers want something to put in a birthday card or under a tree.

• Digital (virtual) gift cards are emailed to the recipient, often with a PDF version they can print. They suit international customers and last-minute buyers.
• Physical gift cards are shipped like normal products. They need printed stock, packaging and shipping, but they feel more like a traditional present.

You do not have to choose one. A good plugin lets you set each gift card product as virtual or physical, so you can offer both from the same catalog.

Choosing a gift card plugin

Several established plugins add gift cards to WooCommerce. They share the basics (a gift card product, codes, email delivery and redemption) but differ in delivery channels, in-store support and how they handle balances.

FMA Gift Card and Voucher

FMA Gift Card and Voucher is our own plugin, sold on the WooCommerce Marketplace at $49 per year. It covers the full gift card workflow inside WooCommerce: digital and physical cards, custom codes, partial redemption, scheduled delivery and branded PDFs.

Other gift card plugins worth comparing

Features change often, so confirm the details on each vendor's page before you buy. Two questions narrow the list quickly: will customers redeem only online or also in a physical location, and do recipients need to spend a balance over several orders?

How to set up gift cards step by step

Here is the setup using FMA Gift Card and Voucher. Other plugins follow a similar order, though menu names differ. Run through it on a staging site first if you have one. For every field and option, see the full plugin documentation.

1. Install and activate. Download the plugin .zip from your WooCommerce.com account, then go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin, upload the file, and click Install and Activate.
2. Configure the general settings. Open WooCommerce > Settings > FMA Gift Card > General Settings. Enable gift cards, add a code prefix or suffix (for example GCV-), turn on partial redemption, choose whether cards apply to the subtotal or the order total, and pick the order statuses that create and email the card. Turn on scheduled delivery if you want customers to choose a send date.
3. Create the gift card product. Go to Products > Add New and set the product type to Gift Card. Choose fixed amounts or a custom amount with a minimum and maximum, set the number of expiration days, select the templates customers can pick from, and decide whether buyers can upload their own image.
4. Set redemption limits. On the same product, choose the products or categories the card can be used on, and tick Exclusive Use if it should not combine with other coupons.
5. Customize the email. Under Email Settings, set the sender name, subject, heading and message. Placeholders such as {recipient_name}, {gift_card_amount} and {sender_message} personalize each email automatically.
6. Set up the PDF. Under PDF Settings, enable the PDF attachment and download, then choose what appears on it: your site name, the personal message, the code and a disclaimer with your terms.
7. Match your store's look. Under Display Settings, adjust button text and colors and the messages customers see for a successful, invalid, expired or insufficient-balance code.
8. Test end to end. Buy a card with a test payment method, check that the email and PDF arrive, then redeem part of the balance on a second order and confirm the remainder is still there.

Once it works, promote the product. Link it from your main menu, cart page and footer, and add a banner during peak gifting seasons. A gift card hidden three clicks deep rarely sells.

Delivery options

How the card reaches the recipient shapes the whole gifting experience. Most stores offer a mix of these three.

Instant email

The card is emailed as soon as the order reaches the status you chose, usually Processing or Completed. Sending only on Completed gives you a chance to review suspicious orders first.

Scheduled delivery

The buyer picks a future date and the card arrives that day. This is ideal for birthdays and holidays, and it lets organized shoppers buy weeks ahead without the gift arriving early. Scheduled emails in WordPress usually rely on WP-Cron, so confirm your host runs it reliably before peak season.

PDF and printed cards

A branded PDF can be attached to the email and downloaded later from the customer's account, which helps buyers who want to print the card and hand it over in person. For physical cards, you ship a printed card like any other product.

Redemption rules to decide before launch

A few settings decide whether your gift cards feel generous or frustrating. Choose them deliberately and state them clearly on the product page.

• Partial redemption. With this on, a $50 card used on a $30 order keeps $20 on the same code for next time. Leave it off and recipients either lose the difference or have to spend it all at once. For almost every store, turning it on is the better choice.
• Subtotal or total. Applying the card to the subtotal leaves tax and shipping to be paid separately. Applying it to the order total lets the card cover everything. Choose based on your tax rules and how you want the card to feel to the customer.
• Who can redeem. You can allow only the named recipient to use the card, or any logged-in customer. Recipient-only redemption protects against a forwarded or leaked code being used by someone else.
• Product and category limits. Restrict a card to certain products or categories, for example a gift card for your coffee range only.
• Stacking with coupons. Exclusive use stops a gift card being combined with discount codes, which protects your margins during sales.
• Expiry. Set expiry in days per product, and check the legal minimum where you sell before choosing a short window (see below).

Tracking gift cards and balances

You need two views: one for you and one for your customers.

For the store owner, a gift card dashboard should show how many cards exist, how many are active, the revenue they generated and the value redeemed. In FMA Gift Card and Voucher, you can also search by code or recipient, filter by status (active, redeemed, expired), create a card manually, import cards in bulk from a CSV file, and review a log of every issue and redemption.

For customers, a Gift Cards tab in My Account shows cards they have received, with total value, amount used and remaining balance, and cards they have bought for others. Recipients need an account to see this tab, so mention it in the gift card email.

Legal, tax and fraud basics

Expiry rules

In the United States, the federal CARD Act says store gift cards and gift certificates cannot expire sooner than five years from issue or the last time money was loaded, and any expiry must be clearly disclosed. Some states go further; California, for example, bans expiry dates on most gift cards. Other countries have their own rules. The safe approach is a long expiry window, with the date shown on the card, the email and the PDF disclaimer.

Tax and accounting

In most US states, selling a gift card is like selling cash, so sales tax is charged when the card is redeemed for taxable goods, not when it is bought. Some regions, including parts of the EU, treat certain vouchers differently. On the accounting side, unredeemed value is typically recorded as a liability until it is spent.

Fraud

Gift cards are attractive to fraudsters because they work like cash. Riskified rates gift cards as about four times riskier than physical goods. Practical defences in WooCommerce include:

• Issuing cards only when an order reaches Completed, so you can review large or unusual orders first
• Restricting redemption to the named recipient
• Reviewing the gift card activity log for repeated or high-value purchases
• Using your payment gateway's fraud tools, such as 3D Secure, on gift card orders

Common mistakes to avoid

• Short or hidden expiry dates. An expiry shorter than the legal minimum, or one the customer never saw, leads to disputes you will usually lose.
• Codes exposed in the wrong emails. If order confirmation emails show the full code, anyone who sees that email could spend it. Send the code to the recipient only.
• An unclear refund policy. Decide whether gift card purchases are refundable, and what happens if a buyer asks for a refund after the card has been used. Put it in your terms.
• No test purchase. Always test a full purchase and a partial redemption before promoting the product.
• Poor visibility. A gift card product nobody can find will not sell. Link it prominently, especially from November to December.

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