Gift cards, reward points and store credit are three ways of holding customer value on account - and they are some of the most underused retention levers in Adobe Commerce. They also touch accounting and margin in ways that deserve thought before launch. Here is what each does and how to run it well.
Gift Cards
A sellable product type (virtual, physical or combined) whose value redeems at checkout via a generated code.
- Setup: create gift card products with fixed or open amounts; codes generate on purchase (or order completion - choose the trigger that matches your fraud posture)
- Redemption: customers apply codes in cart alongside other payment; balances are checkable in their account
- Accounting: unredeemed gift cards are a liability on your books until spent (breakage is real revenue eventually, but recognise it correctly). UK gift card expiry law and accounting treatment deserve an accountant’s look, not a default
- Operations: decide refund policy to gift cards upfront - refunding a card-paid order to a consumed gift card is a support trap
Store Credit
Credit balances held against customer accounts, fed by refunds (“refund to store credit”) or admin adjustments, spent at checkout like a payment method.
The strategic win: refund-to-credit keeps revenue in the store. A customer offered credit instead of a card refund - with a small incentive - very often takes it, converting a return into a future order. Build the refund-to-credit path into your returns workflow deliberately.
Reward Points
Points earned on purchases and actions, redeemed for discounts at checkout. Configurable earn rates (per currency unit spent), redeem rates, and expiry.
Reward programmes work when the maths is simple and the value is visible: “earn 1 point per £1, 100 points = £5 off” beats clever tiered schemes nobody understands. Show the balance in the header and the checkout - invisible points do not drive behaviour.
The Margin Guardrails
All three mechanisms are discounts in different clothing:
- Reward point earn rates are a permanent margin percentage - model them into pricing, not as an afterthought
- Stacking: decide whether points, credit and promotional coupons combine; default Magento lets them stack, which can compound beyond intent
- Fraud: gift card codes are money. Rate-limit balance checks, alert on bulk generation, and treat the gift card grid like the payment grid
The Practical Starting Point
For most stores: launch gift cards first (Q4 alone justifies them), add refund-to-store-credit as a returns policy option, and adopt reward points only when you will genuinely market the programme. Each mechanism is a small config project; the value is in the operating policy around it - refund routing, expiry communication, stacking rules - that you decide once and encode everywhere.