How to send a gift card to someone for free.

Hello, I did a giveaway recently and the winner won a gift card to my store. I thought the way I'd send it to her is buying one off my store but using a discount code, so I don't get charged for it, but have just realised that I can't use discount codes on gift cards. 

Is there anyway I can send it to her without having to pay for it myself?

This was one of the things I asked SS back in May. According to them, you will have to buy the gift card from yourself because you can't simply generate a gift card for giveaways (buying from yourself doesn't really make sense). I do a lot of promotions and giveaways so instead of giving away gift cards, I give away discount codes (which I call gift codes or prize codes) in dollar amounts (e.g., $10, $20, etc.) that my winners can apply on any order. I sell both digital and physical products so if they buy physical products, they just pay shipping. Been working fine, but it would be nice to be able to give away gift cards without buying them myself -- other e-commerce platforms have this capability so I wonder why SS doesn't have this one.

15 hours ago, sruss76 said:

This was one of the things I asked SS back in May. According to them, you will have to buy the gift card from yourself because you can't simply generate a gift card for giveaways (buying from yourself doesn't really make sense). I do a lot of promotions and giveaways so instead of giving away gift cards, I give away discount codes (which I call gift codes or prize codes) in dollar amounts (e.g., $10, $20, etc.) that my winners can apply on any order. I sell both digital and physical products so if they buy physical products, they just pay shipping. Been working fine, but it would be nice to be able to give away gift cards without buying them myself -- other e-commerce platforms have this capability so I wonder why SS doesn't have this one.

Thanks so much for the reply. It's strange that SS hasn't got back to me already (I've also emailed them and haven't got a reply yet), before I got my website through these guys, I got ads all that time about their award-winning customer service, and I find it to be pretty hopeless!

Anways, that's really annoying!! I'll just have to back track a bit and just send her a discount code instead! 

Thanks again!

On 9/21/2020 at 3:52 PM, sruss76 said:

This was one of the things I asked SS back in May. According to them, you will have to buy the gift card from yourself because you can't simply generate a gift card for giveaways (buying from yourself doesn't really make sense). I do a lot of promotions and giveaways so instead of giving away gift cards, I give away discount codes (which I call gift codes or prize codes) in dollar amounts (e.g., $10, $20, etc.) that my winners can apply on any order. I sell both digital and physical products so if they buy physical products, they just pay shipping. Been working fine, but it would be nice to be able to give away gift cards without buying them myself -- other e-commerce platforms have this capability so I wonder why SS doesn't have this one.

Hey, love your response on this as i'm trying to do the same thing. With the promo codes, do you run into any issues with people using these "gift codes" why also applying a sale promo code if you have one or things such as free shipping?

@RCL87 - with dollar amount prize codes, a customer can't combine another sale promo code with those. for example, if i'm running a 10% instant discount storewide, a $10 prize code will override the instant discount. as for free shipping, it depends on how you have free shipping set up. in my case, i offer free US shipping on orders of at least $35 - the free shipping is auto-applied. however, someone with a $10 prize code will have to put in $45 worth of products in their cart in order to trigger the free shipping. if they put $35 worth of products in their cart and use their $10 prize code, then the auto-free shipping disappears and they have to pay shipping. you can also set up a free shipping discount code (which i do -- like lower minimums to select repeat customers, such as a one-time use free shipping code on a $25 order instead of $35) so if someone has a $10 prize code and a free shipping code for a $25 order, they can use both codes during checkout if they put at least $35 worth of products in their cart. does that make sense? anyway, that's how i use discount codes; i have product/category specific discount codes that i include in every order (tailored to the kind of products each customer buys) and these discount codes are higher than what they'd see in my store. it's an effective way to get my existing customers to continue being repeat buyers.

On 9/21/2020 at 12:52 PM, sruss76 said:

This was one of the things I asked SS back in May. According to them, you will have to buy the gift card from yourself because you can't simply generate a gift card for giveaways (buying from yourself doesn't really make sense). I do a lot of promotions and giveaways so instead of giving away gift cards, I give away discount codes (which I call gift codes or prize codes) in dollar amounts (e.g., $10, $20, etc.) that my winners can apply on any order. I sell both digital and physical products so if they buy physical products, they just pay shipping. Been working fine, but it would be nice to be able to give away gift cards without buying them myself -- other e-commerce platforms have this capability so I wonder why SS doesn't have this one.

when you use promo codes cant they be shared and used by other customers? how do you work around this?

7 minutes ago, care said:

when you use promo codes cant they be shared and used by other customers? how do you work around this?

if it's a prize code, i limit the number of uses to 1. i also include the name of the winner/recipient in the discount code so it would be pretty obvious if someone else used it. i've only had it happen once when someone passed their prize code to someone else (despite my specifying in my store and blog that prize codes cannot be passed to another person). i simply voided their order and didn't re-issue the code.

Thanks for the thread! We were hoping to do the similar thing, sending promotional gift cards in addition to a free shipping code. Unfortunately, it looks like we'll need to continue being creative and send one promo code for the total approximate value we're aiming for until SS adds this feature.

Yes! I have been trying to figure out how to send some of my customers gift cards without purchasing, so i guess i have to just use a promo amount code. This is sad that we do not have the option to send a gift card for our customers. 

Same here. We would like to send a gift card instead of sending a dollar amount promo code, BECAUSE: with a gift card you could buy one thing and come back later and buy another thing for the rest amount, with a promo code you can't do that. It would be great to get that issue resolved by SS. 
Thanks

I agree. I am having the same issue. I was SS would fix this ASAP.

Also very much wish this was a thing as discount codes simply don't cut it for many applications.

Commenting in hopes this will be introduced by SS soon.

Ditto. Fingers crossed SS figures an option here!