For a shop, a gift card is almost free revenue: the customer pays today and comes back later, often with someone you had not met yet. Still, many shops work with a voucher booklet and a notebook behind the counter. That works until someone puts a two-year-old voucher on the counter and nobody knows whether it has been used.
The Shop voucher is our module for exactly that situation: one business, one gift card of its own, and a till app that keeps track of what is on it.
Who it is for, and who it is not for
The Shop voucher is for a business that wants to issue its own card. The card can only be spent with you and the money comes to you. Think of a bookshop, a florist or a specialist store, but just as much a restaurant, a lunchroom, a hair salon or a sauna.
You do not have to be a shop. A restaurant uses it for a dining voucher, a café for a gift card at the bar, a salon for a credit voucher towards a treatment. You choose the name on the card; Shop voucher is only what the module is called with us.
Do you want one voucher with a group of businesses that is valid in the whole street or village? Then you need an issuer who settles between the shops. That is what the Local vouchers & city cards module is for. The Shop voucher deliberately stays small.
Selling online
You get your own page where customers choose an amount and pay with iDEAL | Wero. They buy the card for themselves or send it to someone else as a gift, with a personal message. The recipient gets an e-mail with the QR code and can add the card to Apple or Google Wallet. That always shows the current balance.
The amount is paid into your own Mollie account. MijnEvent only keeps track of the balance.
Cards over the counter
Not everyone wants to give an e-mail as a present. So you can also have cards printed:
- You create a batch of codes in the dashboard.
- You download the QR codes as a print-ready file: a PDF sheet with instructions for the printer, an SVG, separate PNGs or a code file.
- Your own printer puts them on cards in your branding.
There are two kinds. A pre-loaded card has a fixed amount you choose when ordering, for example €25. Useful for a busy December. A blank card has no amount yet: your staff enter what the customer wants to give at the moment of sale.
Activating when handing over
This is the part that makes the difference compared with a stack of pre-printed vouchers. A card is worth nothing until you activate it. Your staff scan the card when they hand it over, check the amount and tap activate. Only then does it carry a balance.
That has two advantages. Every card is checked before it leaves the shop. And a box of cards that disappears from the stockroom is worthless.
A card is loaded once. After that the customer can spend the balance in parts; whatever is left stays on the card.
Paying with the card
When the customer returns, your staff scan the QR in the till app, see the balance and redeem the amount. In a restaurant the waiting staff do that at the table or the bar, on a phone or tablet: the guest pays the whole bill or part of it with the voucher. Using the same card twice for the full amount is not possible: the balance lives in one place.
After every action the app shows the article code you set yourself, with the amount next to it. Your staff ring that up in your own till, so the sale or redemption of a gift card is correct there too. When redeeming they can also enter an article code or receipt number. That comes back in the export for your bookkeeping.
Every staff member logs in with their own e-mail address and PIN. So for every action you see who did it.
What it costs
- €149 per year for the module.
- €0.50 per voucher.
How that €0.50 is settled depends on the kind of voucher:
- Sold online: deducted from the payment.
- Pre-loaded card: you pay for the batch up front with iDEAL | Wero.
- Blank card: the cost only falls due when you load the card. We add those up and collect them on the last day of the month. You agree to that once in the dashboard.
If a direct debit fails, you receive a payment link and temporarily cannot load new blank cards. Existing cards can still be spent; your customers will not notice.
Getting started
You switch the module on yourself in the dashboard: paying the yearly licence is enough. After that you set the name and amounts of your card, invite your staff and you can start selling. All details are on the Shop voucher module page.
