Sitecore Commerce Gift Cards

eGiftCard Functionality Explained!

Gift Cards are prepaid stored-value money cards usually issued by a retailer or bank to be used as an alternative to cash for purchases within a particular store or related businesses. 
Gift cards are also given out by retailers and marketers as part of a promotion strategy, to entice the recipient to come in or return to the store, and at times such cards are called cash cards. 
Gift cards are generally redeemable only for purchases at the relevant retail premises and cannot be cashed out, and in some situations may be subject to expiry date or fees.

We will explain how Gift Cards functionality is handled in Sitecore Commerce. Gift Cards are treated as an Entitlement in Sitecore Commerce.

When a customer purchases a Gift Card, and when the order containing digital items are released, the Released Orders Minion Pipeline calls the Provision Entitlements Pipeline. 

This creates the order's entitlements and links them to the order and the order's customer (if the customer is authenticated/registered with an email address on the website).

An entitlement represents a trackable unit of ownership or license, with the ability to track unit quantities or stored value as they change due to the customer or ambient activity. 

This allows a separation of concerns between rights to access a digital product or the tracking of activity on a customer’s behalf.

Example entitlements include: 

• gift card 
• warranty 
• installation service 
• digital product 
• loyalty membership  

In this article, we will explain about the Gift Card, and we will explain other entitlement types in the upcoming articles. 

Entitlement capabilities include: 

• separate provisioning process for an entitlement when an order is placed  

• separate tracking of a customer’s current entitlements from the original order that caused it to be provisioned 

• ability to track a quantity on an entitlement that is relevant to the entitlement, such as the current value of a gift card 

We will explain below topics in Sitecore Commerce:

• Setting Up Gift Card – Stored-Value Variations
• Purchasing a Gift Card
• Redeeming Gift Card (Usage)
• Order Entitlements – After Purchase Provisioning for Guest / Non-Authenticated Customers
• Customer Entitlement – After Purchase Provisioning for Registered / Authenticated Customers
• Tracking Customer’s activities in Order / Customer Entitlement 

When an order containing digital items is released, the Released Orders Minion Pipeline calls the Provision Entitlements Pipeline. This creates the order's entitlements and links them to the order and the order's customer (if the customer is authenticated).

Gift Card Setup:

Setup as regular Sellable item with entitlement, tax exempt, discount exempt tag, as Gift Cards are entitlements that are mostly exempt from tax and discount

Gift Card Purchase:

Adds multiple lines to carts based on the quantity selected. In this case lets add 2 quantity $100.00

Adding Gift Card to Cart:

2 lines are added and notice there is no tax, no discount as per the tags and no shipping as it is an entitlement

Sending eGift Card to Friend:

Enter your friends email in the recipient’s email

Your Payment Details:

Enter your payment details as you are paying to buy a Gift Card for your friend

Gift Card Order Placed:  Viewing Order Entitlements

Redeeming Gift Cards : (Your Friend Using you eGift Online)

Order Placed with Gift Card Payment:

Order & Customer Entitlement reflect the Card Value : Order Release Minions in the background

Notice the redemptions are applied in the entitlements and current balance is updated.

Only you will see order entitlements if you purchased your entitlement as a Guest Customer.

If you want to see your entitlements, you need to purchase the entitlement as a Registered Customer (Authenticated Customer)

All the above are explained functionalities are out-of-the-box commerce functionality.

We can extend this functionality to suite your needs using Sitecore’s Plugin Architecture.

Please reach out to XCentium for further information regarding this feature.