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External gift card providers

Eleanor Robb
$organization

Hi all, 

We are embarking on a gift card project this year and I'm interested to hear from organisations who are using external gift card providers. 

We have multiple points of sale across the organisation, both on and offline. Tessitura is one of our main ones, but not our only one. 

We need a solution that will connect with all of our points of sale: Tessitura, our custom Tessitura online booking interface via API, Magento, Shopify, and our other physical POS system H&L. 

  • Ideally we want something with an open API to allow us to integrate with those varied POS systems.
  • We would like the future ability to move to an entirely cashless system for all of our business.
  • We want a centralised place to report on gift card activity from across the different POS for reconciliation and marketing purposes. 
  • We need a system with flexible expiry dates on cards to keep up with gift card regulation and also facilitate the potential cashless system.
  • We aren't decided on closed or open loop, but would prefer that money was spent with the organisation's businesses.
  • We would like a system that offers both e-card and physical card options.
  • And we would like a low-cost provider, ideally.

If anyone has been or is in the same boat, I'd love to connect and learn more about your solutions. 

Thanks,
Eleanor

  • $organization

    Hi Eleanor -

    We’re always very interested at Tessitura to hear about initiatives like this and if there are specific products that people are looking for and investigating. Please let us know if any single gift card provider rises to the top and is being used by multiple members. Tessitura does integrate with Visa and Mastercard branded gift cards, but not non-visa and mastercard providers. At this time, we have not explored that deeply enough to endorse a custom process. We do understand the desire and need to be able to lock down the revenue to your specific organization, but also want to throw a cautionary word into the pot as we don't know what you'd need to do or if that work is feasible in the long term. Payments are an area that changes quickly in these modern times and we've seen significant changes needed to our application just to keep compliant with our current payment providers in the last few years. A single integrated gift card is a feature request that we’ve heard and recorded through our enhancement process and we’re always on the look-out for ways to make Tessitura work better for our members.

    In case you weren’t aware, our Shopify POS integration does allow for redemption of Tessitura gift cards through the Shopify retail app (although not currently online at this time). If you have any questions about the Point of Sale integration, we’d be happy to chat with you more about it.

    Best,

    Heather

  • $organization in reply to Heather Laidlaw Kraft (she/her)

    Hi Heather, 

    Thanks for the overview. I'll certainly keep the network updated as we progress this year. 

    At the moment we only use Shopify for our online merchandise sales. H&L handles our in-person POS requirements for both merchandise and food and beverage. 

    Thanks,

    Eleanor

  • $organization in reply to Heather Laidlaw Kraft (she/her)

    Hi Heather,

    Can I bump this old discussion thread to ask how the Shopify integration is proceeding and whether (or when) Tessitura Gift Cards can be used with Shopify Online sales?

    We deferred our work on this when Covid-19 hit last year, but we are keen to get back on track in early 2021.

    Thanks

    James

  • $organization in reply to James Murty

    Hi James -

    We're actually redoing our Shopify Gift Certificate functionality because we ran into a bunch of issues with financial reporting - especially with anyone who has to collect taxes. Due to that, we are no longer going to use the discounting functionality and are going to be leveraging Shopify's Gift Certificate API for both POS and Online. This does require a Shopify PLUS account and will be what is needed if a member wishes to utilize Tessitura Gift Certificates via Shopify.

    Due to the re-write we're concentrating our development efforts first on getting the membership discount available online and online purchase history back into Tessitura, then we'll tackle the Gift Certificate functionality as a whole later in 2021.

    Hope this helps!

    Heather