Hey all! Does anyone use physical gift cards instead of the email option? If so, are you using a paper printout or do you use plastic gift cards? And lastly, if it’s a plastic gift card, are you using a 3rd party system for this?
TIA for any help/suggestions!
We just work within the Vin65 card system. It’s not something we actively sell in the store, just online. If we sell in the store then we deliver by email. No physical card.
(@Brent I feature requested this years ago, but I’ll say yet again that a way to quickly scan in that awkward 16 character code would completely transform how we use this feature. Just one example: discount vouchers for events. When you have a line of folks waiting, typing in a code is a non starter. But if we could pop it quickly in via the iPad camera or other means…)
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@ElJefe - Love the idea. Gift cards are something that several wineries are looking for. It’s something on our development roadmap down the road (nothing imminent) but we’re looking for good partners in the GC space.
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A scannable physical card would be huge.
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A scannable card is exactly what we’re looking for. It’s pretty cumbersome to hand enter the 16 digit code when it’s being redeemed. And if the customer puts in the wrong email address as they are typing on our POS, it’s even more challenging since they won’t receive their code via email, and they have to have their giftee’s email address handy or the code has to get forwarded. We have several guests looking for a quick gift in the tasting room, so here’s hoping gift cards get moved up from “not imminent” to soon. 
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Just some food for thought, we sell Gift Cards out of our Tasting Room. We have pre-made gift cards with a Code that we select and we enter them in Vin65 at $0. When a guest comes in to purchase it, the transaction is linked with the gift card that was created, but you have to go back in to the Gift Card (Store-Gift Cards-find correct one) and manually add a balance that equals the amount that they purchased the gift card for. It only take a quick second to enter it and we keep a manual log in the TR too, just in case a Wine Guide forgets to enter the amount. You can always run a Gift Card report too and you can see your outstanding gift cards and it is easy to see which ones may be missing a balance that have been used. This allows us to sell Gift Cards for any amount in the TR.
Hope that helps!
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@Brent - is this something our Merchant Processors can offer, with the peeps from MagTek and PaxTechnology? Both of those companies make software and equipment to print pre-paid cards.
On that note, how well are pre-paid cards working now-a-days?
There are a lot of gift card systems out there that could offer physical gift cards for wineries, so if your merchant processor is an option for you - that’s great! Vin65 has open APIs that a gift card vendor could work with it they want to have the systems tie together.
As I’ve never had one in the tasting room how well do the pre-paid cards work on the system?
Are there any out that currently have a link in the API?
I just setup this exact system for the winery I’m working for. It’s a bit complicated to explain to tasting room staff which reduces the amount of sales, but it’s a functional system. I have some quick instructions I put together for the staff for selling a gift card, adding a gift card and checking gift card balances from the POS/Admin if anyone is interested.
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Oh snap! Some magic is happening in the Vin65 office… thought this forum thread would be interested.
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Tease
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Do we have any beta testers that would like to try out physical cards? We’re getting close and would like a few wineries to try this if they’d like.
In.
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OK - I’ll put you in touch with the vendor so you guys and talk design/pricing.
I’m willing to play with blanks now to shake out the code, and worry about design later.
Thanks Jeff - all cards will have codes printed on them. So no blanks for now.
OK, what I meant was if you want me to beat it up now with generic cards I’ll worry about design later…
Gotcha - I’ll connect you with the vendor that is producing the cards.