[New] Square eGift Cards in Apple Wallet

[#1]

Redeeming eGift cards just became even easier for you and your customers! Now when customers purchase digital eGift Cards from your business, they'll have the option to add their eGift card to their Apple Wallet. 

eGift cards held in a customer's Apple Wallet are quick to redeem from your point of sale with scannable QR codes. They also help keep your business top of mind for your customers to bring them back to spend their balance. Customers will also be less likely to misplace their eGift cards or lose them in their inbox.  

To get started, make sure that you enable your customers to add eGift Cards to their Apple Wallet.

To allow customers to add their gift cards to their Apple Wallet:

1. Go to Gift Cards in your online Square Dashboard.
2. Under the Settings tab, check the box next to Enable Apple Wallet integration. 
3. Click Save.

Once the integration is turned on, the next time your customer receives an eGift card from your business they will receive the option to add it to their Apple Wallet from their eGift Card email. 

To redeem an eGift Card from your customer's Apple Wallet:

1. Add items to your cart or enter a custom amount.
2. Tap Charge > Gift Cards.
3. Ask your customer to pull up their eGift Card in their Apple Wallet from their mobile device.
4. Looking at the eGift Card on your customer's mobile device, use your device's front-facing camera to scan the QR code.

OR if you do not have a front facing camera or scanner on your point of sale device, you can manually type in the 14-digit gift card number > tap Charge to complete the payment flow.

To learn more about Square eGift Cards, visit our Support Center. 

[TheRealChipA]

Yay! 

[TCSlaguna]

This is great! Having eGift Cards in Apple Wallet will definitely keep the store in people's mind. 

Just enabled it on our account. Important to have 3:1 width to height for logo. It would be nice if the preview box was slightly bigger. 

Thanks! 

[DLRosenberg]

this is really awesome 🙂

[tranguyen]

I'll make sure to pass this on to the team @TCSlaguna — thank you for sharing ❤️

[rtfulk]

@TCSlaguna  I would like to see a better image of how the card would look in the wallet also.

[Stacelyn24]

This is a game changer.  I love attention to detail and making thing a lot easier for our clients.  We're about to launch egift cards, creating a automated marketing campaign and pump this...thanks square 🙂

[grovetealounge]

This is huge! Additional functionality like this might seem like a small thing, but it's things like this that help keep us small businesses top of mind with our customers and compete on a similar level with the big brands.  As a cafe owner, I'm always looking at places like Starbucks and Panera Bread in regards to their loyalty programs, how seamlessly they integrate their apps, gift cards, etc into the fold of people's everyday lives and keep them on hand, easily accessible, and visible at all times.

With Square egift cards now able to live in Apple Wallet, are there plans to enable "tap to pay" with said gift card? I tested it out on our square register to see if that was an option and it doesn't appear to be yet.  We have a Square Register so our hardware doesn't have a camera to scan the QR code from the wallet (and the barcode scanner doesn't have the ability to read QR codes).  The lack of a "tap to pay" feature for Square eGift Cards in the Apple Wallet does knock the convenience and usability down a few notches as that's part of what makes Apple Wallet so great and convenient!  It's pretty cumbersome and time consuming for our staff to type in a very tiny 14-digit gift card number off of someones phone - that part of the transaction is clunky and kind of awkward to be honest

Overall I'd say 7/10!  Would easily be a 10/10 feature if you guys could get the gift cards to be read via tap to pay from the Apple Wallet 🙂

[grovetealounge]

To add to the analogy, having a square gift card in my Apple Wallet but having to manually type in the 14-digit card number is about as awkward as my keeping my credit card in my Apple Wallet and then having to show the card details to the cashier every time I check out so they can manually type in my credit card number, expiration date, and CVV code

Regardless, it's a huge step in the right direction and I'm super excited for the feature to help keep us top of mind with customers! Would love to see tap to pay enabled to help bring the feature that final mile and really make it special and maximize it's effectiveness and use

[CC99]

What about physical gift cards. We sell a lot of those at our coffee shop and don’t really use the “E-gift cards”. I would love to be able to scan my physical gift card and add it to my wallet. Please advise on how to do that if you can. 

[tranguyen]

Thanks for flagging this @CC99! Printed physical gift cards do include a QR code or barcode that you can scan at checkout to redeem their values. The only limitation is that the ability to scan gift card's QR code or barcode is available on iOS devices only. 

[tranguyen]

I'm not sure if enable Tap to Pay function for gift cards are on the roadmap yet but will make sure to share your feedback with the right team @grovetealounge!

[grovetealounge]

Thank you!

[MAXSDELI]

Fantastic new feature. Toggled it on and tested it, seems to work fine. 
 

[MAXSDELI]

It is a good question @CC99 keep in mind however, giving customers the ability to add physical gift cards to their phone wallet will negate the need for customers to redeem their physical gift cards in person, thereby losing those gift cards as reusable. 

This may not be of concern to some, I find it incredibly useful to reuse gift cards as many times as possible given their cost and those that I can’t reuse (due to their condition) I find useful for giveaways. 

[MAXSDELI]

Hmm, I hadn’t redeemed my TEST card yet but I just assumed that if it finds a home in your wallet that it would be available as a “tap-to-pay” option, it’s not?

[BernadetteA]

It doesn't look like it is possible, @MAXSDELI based on the conversation here. I will see if I can get some additional details from @tranguyen or the product teams in the upcoming work week for you. 

[MAXSDELI]

Agreed. I’m a bit surprised that the tap-to-pay function isn’t the reason for having eCards find a home in a customers wallet. It’s a bit like giving you a car without the steering wheel…

[tranguyen]

Thanks for tagging @BernadetteA!

Although you can add the eGift Card to your Apple Wallet, it isn't possible to tap with it at this time @MAXSDELI . Customers will need to scan the barcode or type in the digits in order to complete their purchases at the moment. It's something we've shared with our Product team so hopefully we'll see this functionality add in the future! 

[MAXSDELI]

Thank you for the reply, I’m sure we all look forward to the implementation of the tap-to-pay feature for eGift cards in Wallet. 

[CC99]

Yes, I have noticed that they are only scannable on IOS devices. Seems like there is really 2 issues. To make physical gift cards able to be added to your wallet in your phone. 2nd to allow the Square registers and square terminals to scan qr codes so they can be more usable in person. With the QR code now on the back of the physical gift card I keep having people ask if it can be added to their wallets. Then it's just a lot of confusion with explaining between an e-gift card and a physical one and their limitations. Please consider adding to their functionality to add a physical one to your wallet and making the e-gift card scannable at the square register. 

[CC99]

Thanks for the reply @MAXSDELI . I've definitely though of that as they are expensive and we totally reuse them if we get them back. For us at our church coffee shop, I've found that luckily many people still give them back so we can re-use them, so that's really good. 

[CC99]

Yes, please add this feature! I agree with all the comments here, it just doesn't make sense that you can't do this. 

[CC99]

Yes, agreed. Great feedback @grovetealounge !