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Issue refunds to gift cards

With Square physical or eGift Cards, you can process returns and provide your customers with store credits. Offering a refund to an eGift Cards helps you:

  • Hold on to your earnings: Keep the money that’s already been spent at your business when you refund to a free eGift card, directly from your point of sale.

  • Keep customers coming back: Make it simple for them to use their eGift card in-store or online.

  • Grow your sales: Gift card customers are likely to spend more on your business. Plus, digital eGift Cards are easily reloadable in-store or online for future sales.

Issuing a Refund to a Gift Card

If you’d like to issue a customer store credit, you can issue a refund to a Square Gift Cards from compatible iOS and Android devices using Square Point of Sale, Square for Retail and Square Appointments. Refunds can be issued to physical gift cards from the app or your Square Dashboard or from free, digital eGift Cards from the app. Square does not charge load fees when you issue refunds to gift cards.

Refund to a physical gift card

  1. Open the navigation menu and tap Transactions.

  2. Search the receipt number or the payment card number to find the transaction.

  3. Tap the transaction you want to refund and select Issue Refund.

  4. Select the items you want to refund and choose to restock the returned items by tapping Refund.

  5. Tap Add Gift Card or Swipe. You can then swipe the gift card, take a photo of the gift card QR code or barcode with your device’s camera, scan the gift card barcode with a barcode scanner or manually enter the gift card number.

  6. Tap Refund.

Refund to an eGift Card

  1. Open the navigation menu and tap Transactions.

  2. Enter the receipt number or the payment card number in the search bar to find the transaction.

  3. Tap the transaction you want to refund and select Issue Refund.

  4. Select the items or the amount you want to refund and tap Next

  5. Under Refund To, select Gift Card > Create eGift Card.

  6. Enter the customer’s email address in the box. This will autofill if you’ve already added your customer’s email address to their profile in your customer directory. On the customer-facing screen, your customer can edit the email address or enter a new email address, then tap Done

  7. Confirm the email address with your customer, then tap Done

  8. On the Refund Complete window, tap Done

After issuing a refund to an eGift card from your point of sale, your customer will receive an email with their eGift card that they can use for store credit the next time they shop with you. You may also pull up the customer during their next sale and .

To issue a refund to a gift card from your Square Dashboard:

  1. Go to Gift Cards from your online Square Dashboard.

  2. Under Overview, click the transaction in question or type the gift card number in the search bar.

  3. Under Receipt, click View.

  4. A new tab will open with the transaction.

  5. Click ••• next to Send Receipt.

  6. Click Issue refund.

Square Gift Cards have a $2,000 load limit. You cannot refund more than $2,000 to a gift card, including the existing balance on the card. Additionally, gift cards are not available for refunding split-tender transactions or Square Invoices.

Reporting

Refunds made to Gift Cards will be recorded in the Sales Summary Report and the Gift Card Summary Report on the Square Dashboard. Gift Card sales may also be viewed from the Reportssection in the app. The total collected will be refunded to the gift card, and fees will not be removed from the net total. You can see the amount refunded to gift cards under the ‘Gift Card’ section in the Total Collected section of the Sales Summary Report.

Note: Any paid tips will not be returned to the gift card.

Currently, refunds show up in the Transfer report on the Dashboard and in the Square POS app. Since refunds to Gift Cards do not move money between you and your customer, any refund made to Gift Cards will not show up on the report.

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