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Gift cards have an extra Physical Gift Cards tab, for producing pre-printed physical cards (plastic, paper, or a PDF) that each carry a unique QR code. Physical cards let you sell gift cards over the counter and let customers gift them by hand. Open a Gift Card from Passes and select Physical Gift Cards.
This tab only appears on gift cards. Physical gift cards are part of VEXiON PRO and are managed on a computer.

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How physical gift cards work

The important idea is that a printed card carries no money until you activate it. Each card moves through three states:
  1. Inactive the card is printed but empty. If it is lost or stolen before it is sold, it is worthless: scanning it just shows that the card has not been activated yet.
  2. Activated a staff member has taken payment and loaded a balance onto it.
  3. Registered the customer has scanned it, entered their details, and added it to their wallet.
This is what makes physical cards safe to print in bulk and leave on display. A card also becomes Expired once its expiration date passes. Its link then shows “Gift Card Expired”.

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1. Generate a batch

Click Create New Batch:
  • Card Sides: choose 1-Sided or 2-Sided.
  • PDF template: upload your printed card design as a PDF (a Front PDF, plus a back for 2-sided cards). A visual QR placement editor lets you position the QR code exactly where you want it on the design, and set its colours.
  • Quantity: how many cards to generate (up to 200 per batch).
  • Generate Batch: creates the batch. Every card gets its own unique QR code placed on your template, ready to print.
The loadable amounts are the preset amounts you set on the gift card itself (see Gift Card settings). Staff load one of those presets at activation, so set them up before you sell.

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2. Print and hand off

When the batch is ready:
  • You receive a batch-ready email with the finished, print-ready PDF.
  • You can also download the PDF from the dashboard at any time: open the batch’s ”…” menu in Batch History and download it. (The first download marks the batch as Downloaded.)
  • Print them yourself, or forward the email or PDF to a printing company to have them produced professionally.

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3. Activate it when a customer buys one

Physical cards are activated in the Scanner (or on a connected POS). When a customer buys a card, a staff member:
  1. Scans the card’s printed QR code with the Scanner (see Gift cards on the scanner), or on a supported POS.
  2. The card opens showing a Balance of 0 and a Top up tab. Under Top up, staff pick one of the preset amounts you set on the gift card. You do not type a free amount, only your presets can be loaded, so a mistap cannot load the wrong sum. A preset can include a bonus, shown as, for example, “+5.00€”.
  3. Tap Top up. This loads the balance (the amount plus any bonus), sets the expiration (12 months by default), records the sale as paid, and activates the card (its status changes from inactive to activated).
The card can now be spent. The activation is the sale. The card’s Activity shows Gift card sold, and you get one sale email. A later top up shows as Gift card topped up.
Activating on a connected POS is done in the POS itself, not on the dashboard. For Papaya, see Gift cards. On Dotykačka and Storyous, the first top-up of a printed card in the till also activates it. The steps above describe activating with the VEXiON Scanner.

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4. The customer claims it

Once a card is activated, the person who receives it scans the QR code with their phone camera and:
  • Is asked for their name and email.
  • Then adds the card to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet.
The wallet pass always shows the current balance. This works both ways round: someone can buy a card and physically gift it to another person who claims it, or buy it for themselves, scan it, and add it to their own wallet.

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5. Spending the balance

Customers spend the balance like any gift card. Staff scan the card in the Scanner (or on a connected POS) and use the Deduct tab to take an amount off the balance (up to what is left). The balance can be spent from either the wallet pass or the physical card, and it always reflects what is left.

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Batch History

Every batch you have generated is listed: Use the per-batch ”…” menu to download a batch again, to use Search Tokens to find a single card, or to use Archive Batch. Archiving makes the batch’s inactive cards invalid. Activated and registered cards keep working. In the search results, click a card to open Send Digital Copy, which sends the customer a copy of the card for their wallet. Use Refresh to update the list.