Overview
Shopify limits a variety of features exclusively to Shopify Plus, their premium package. In this article, we'll talk about how gift cards work differently across all Shopify plans.
Shopify Gift Cards & Your Shopify Plan
Recent Shopify API changes have affected how the Modern Retail eGift Card integration interacts with different Shopify Plans. We will outline these changes below.
Shopify Basic -- As a whole, this plan is incompatible with the Modern Retail integration as it does not provide customer data via its API. We require all Shopify integrations to at least be on the Shopify Grow plan for general integration function, regardless of whether you have the eGift Card integration or not.
Shopify Grow and Shopify Advanced -- While these two plans are compatible with the eGift Card integration, they do have several limitations.
- These plans cannot utilize Gift Card PINS as they are not natively supported by Shopify. As you know, PINS are an extra security measure to protect your gift card integration from fraud and nefarious actors. This Shopify limitation means that your Gift Card integration will not have the same level of security provided by the Modern Retail Shopify Plus eGift Card integration.
Because of this limitation, Modern Retail requires the following:
(a) Randomized digits for the eGift Card number -- eGift Card Values
(b) The use of Google reCaptcha -- Generating reCaptcha Keys
- Integrations with Shopify are done by utilizing their Application Programming Interface (API). The various Shopify plans have varying levels of calls we can make to their API (topping out with Shopify Plus, which is nearly unlimited). Because gift card updates, product updates, order synchronization, etc. are all happening at the same time, and utilizing the same “pool” of API calls, eGift Card balance updates may take up to 30 minutes based on the available API calls discussed above.
Shopify Plus -- Shopify Plus does not have the same API limitations as Grow and Advanced. This plan allows for the use of eGift Card PINS and does not have the same 30-minute delay for balances.
Shopify Plus clients who use our gift card services should be aware that if a shopper uses ShopPay or GooglePay, they will not be offered the opportunity to enter a gift card in checkout. Those services route shoppers off the site and we are unable to install our gift card redemption service on their servers. There are opportunities for shoppers to enter their gift card before they get to payment.
If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact us with a support request in the Admin Panel.