Paytronix Gift Cards Tutorial

This page is the complete guide to the app, written to be read alongside your Shopify admin. Steps 1 to 11 take you from installing it to selling your first card. The sections after that cover running it day to day: managing your inventory, chasing a missing email address, and how refunds and reversals work. You do not need the app installed to read any of it.

Gather these five things first. Setup stalls without them, usually at step 2 or step 4.

• Your Paytronix merchant ID and store code, from Paytronix.
• Confirmation from Paytronix that the MalterTech Shopify integration is enabled on your account. You can do the whole of this tutorial without it, but live sales will be refused until it is on.
• Your unused gift card numbers, supplied by Paytronix as card codes and registration codes.
• The SMTP details for your own mail server: host, port, encryption, username, password, and a from address.
• A Shopify store you can edit, on a plan that allows checkout customization if you want the redeem form at checkout.

There is no username or password to create for the app itself. It signs you in through Shopify, and the Paytronix API login is handled on our side.

There are two halves, and they are independent. You can set up one and ignore the other.

Selling gift cards. You upload a batch of unused Paytronix card numbers. When a customer buys your gift card product, the app takes the next unused card, loads the amount paid onto it through Paytronix, and emails the card to the customer or to whoever they chose to send it to.

Spending gift cards. Customers check their balance on your storefront and redeem a Paytronix card at checkout. Redeeming moves their whole Paytronix balance onto a Shopify gift card for that order, then returns anything they did not spend.

Work through the steps below in order. Each one depends on the one before it.

Install Paytronix Gift Cards from the Shopify App Store. It opens inside your Shopify admin, under Apps, and everything in this tutorial happens either there or elsewhere in your admin.

The app has three tabs: Home for settings, Gift Cards for your inventory, and Docs.

On the Home page, fill in the Paytronix section:

• Merchant ID is your Paytronix account number. Numbers only.
• Store Code identifies your store within that account.

Press Test in the section header. It checks the pair against Paytronix and tells you straight away whether they work. You can test before saving, so get a pass here before moving on.

A passing test does not mean you are ready to sell. It confirms the credentials are valid. Live sales also need Paytronix to have enabled the MalterTech integration on your account, which is a separate request to them.

The Environment switch at the top of the Home page decides which Paytronix server every action uses. Testing is the Paytronix lab server, where cards, balances, and sales are not real. Production is the live server, where they are.

New installs start in Testing. Leave it there until you have finished this tutorial and done a full test run at step 10. The switch saves immediately after a confirmation, separately from the Save button.

A card you sell while in Testing is loaded on the lab server, not the live one, but it is still marked sold in your inventory and cannot be sold again. Treat anything you upload before going live as test stock, and keep your real card numbers back until step 11.

Gift card emails are sent from your own mail server, not ours, so customers see them coming from you and deliverability stays under your control. Fill in the SMTP section with the details from your email provider: host, port, encryption, username, password, and the from address.

Press Test in the section header to check the connection before you save.

This is the step most worth getting right. If the SMTP details are wrong, gift cards are still sold and charged for and recorded against your inventory, they just never reach anyone. Do not sell until this test passes.

Three sections on the Home page control what a customer receives.

• General: your business name, logo, gift card image, background, text and accent colors, and the Check Balance URL customers are pointed to. That URL is the page you will put the balance block on at step 8.
• Email: the title and body copy of the gift card email.
• Errors: what a customer sees when a redemption fails. Failed Redeem is added after the reason it failed, so use it to tell them how to reach you. Disabled Card replaces the message shown when someone tries to redeem a card you switched off.

Press Preview Email to see exactly what the customer receives, rendered with your branding. Preview it before you sell anything: it is much easier than sending yourself a test card and waiting for it.

The app recognizes a gift card purchase by the product's SKU. Create a normal Shopify product for your gift card, then set the SKU on every variant to exactly digital-gift-card.

Use a separate variant for each amount you want to sell, and price each variant accordingly. The amount loaded onto the card is the price paid for that line, so a $50 variant loads $50.

This SKU is required and it is the single most common setup mistake. If it is missing, misspelled, or set on only some variants, the order completes and the customer is charged, but no gift card is ever issued.

Paytronix supplies your unused card numbers. Upload them on the Gift Cards page so the app has stock to sell from. Press Download Template for a CSV with the right headers, then fill it in. The file needs exactly two columns, card_code and reg_code.

• Every row needs both values, and both must be numbers only.
• A card can only be uploaded once.
• If any row repeats another row in the file, or a card already in your inventory, nothing at all is uploaded and the error names the first duplicate. Fix that row and upload the whole file again.

The upload starts as soon as you pick the file. There is no separate submit button.

Keep an eye on how many unsold cards are left. If stock runs out, a customer can buy a gift card that cannot be issued. The app emails you as your stock gets low.

Two blocks are available to place in your theme, and neither appears until you add it by hand. Installing the app does not put anything on your storefront.

Gift Card Balance lets a customer enter their card and registration codes and see their balance. Put it on the page you used as your Check Balance URL at step 5. Product is an optional product page block.

To add one:

1. Open the theme editor and pick the page you want the block on.
2. Click Add section or Add block, depending on where you want it.
3. Choose the Apps tab.
4. Pick Gift Card Balance, then drag it where you want it.
5. Click Save.

The redeem form lets a customer spend their Paytronix balance during checkout. You add it once, in the checkout editor.

1. Go to Settings, then Checkout, and click Customize on your live checkout.
2. Click Add app block where you want the form to appear.
3. Choose Gift Card.
4. Click Save.

The Send as Gift form is separate and needs no setup at all. It appears under each gift card in the cart at checkout automatically, letting the buyer send the card to someone else with a message and a delivery date.

Still in Testing, walk the whole path a customer would. This catches in ten minutes what would otherwise surface on a real order.

1. Buy your gift card product, using a Shopify test order or a real order you refund afterwards.
2. Check the email arrives, at the address on the order, looking the way your preview did.
3. Open the Gift Cards page and confirm the card now shows a Sold At date and a status of Active.
4. Take the card and registration codes from that email to your storefront balance block and confirm the balance is right.
5. Start a second order and redeem the card at checkout using the block you added at step 9.
6. Complete that order, then check the card's Transaction history on the Gift Cards page.

If you redeem a card worth more than the order, the leftover goes back to the Paytronix card automatically, usually within an hour. In between, the Paytronix balance reads low while the value sits on a Shopify gift card. Both the storefront balance page and the transaction history add the two together, so the number a customer sees is always what they can actually spend.

When the test run is clean, in this order:

1. Confirm with Paytronix that the MalterTech Shopify integration is enabled on your account.
2. Switch Environment to Production on the Home page and confirm the dialog.
3. Upload your real gift card numbers on the Gift Cards page.
4. Re-run the Paytronix Test, which now checks against the live server.
5. Publish the gift card product.

Cards you uploaded and sold during testing are lab cards. Leaving them in your inventory is harmless, since sold cards are never resold, but do not hand them to a customer.

The Gift Cards page lists your whole inventory, 100 rows at a time, most recently sold first. Use the Previous and Next buttons to page through it.

Search matches the start of a card code or a registration code, or an exact order ID. Sort offers most recently sold first, longest ago first, or unsold first. Changing the sort starts you back at page one.

Sold At is blank while a card is still available, which is what marks it as in stock.

Status is where the card stands:

• Unsold means it is in stock, waiting to be sold.
• Active means it has been sold and the customer can spend it.
• Disabled means you switched it off. A disabled card cannot be redeemed at checkout and will not be sold, whether or not it had already been sold. Use it if a card is lost, stolen, or was handed out by mistake. You can switch it back on at any time, and it returns to Active or Unsold depending on whether it had sold.

Each row carries these actions:

• Transaction history, on sold cards only, shows the card's live balance above every redemption made against it: the amount, whether it is pending, redeemed, or reversed, the date, and links to the order and to the Shopify gift card. A card has no balance or history until it is sold, which is why unsold cards do not offer this.
• Sell manually, on unsold cards only, sells a card by hand. Enter an amount, and optionally an email address, sender name, and message. Leave the email blank to sell the card without emailing anyone, which is what you want when you are handing over a physical card in person.
• Enable or disable the card. It confirms first, and the button is labelled by what pressing it would do.
• View order, on cards sold through an order, opens that order in your admin. A manually sold card has no order, so it shows no link.

Click any card code or registration code to copy it.

Occasionally an order arrives with no email address on it at all. That happens with phone-only checkouts, point of sale orders, and draft orders. It is an ordinary situation, not a fault.

The customer has paid, so the card is still sold and set aside for them. It appears in a Waiting on an Email Address section at the top of the Gift Cards page, and the order is tagged Gift card email missing in your admin, so you can filter for it there.

Enter an address in that section and the card is emailed within a few minutes. If the section is not showing at all, there is nothing waiting, which is the normal case.

When a customer redeems a Paytronix card at checkout, their whole card balance moves onto a Shopify gift card, not just the amount the order needs. That is deliberate: it means they can add or remove items without redeeming again, and a card worth more than the order still covers it.

Whatever they do not spend goes back to their Paytronix card automatically, usually within an hour of the order. In between, their Paytronix balance reads low while the money sits on the Shopify gift card. Both the storefront balance block and the app's transaction history add the two together, so the number a customer sees is always what they can actually spend.

Two things undo a redemption entirely, and both happen on their own:

• They never complete the order. The app notices the unused redemption, deactivates the Shopify gift card, and puts the balance back on their Paytronix card. It waits an hour first, so a slow checkout is never mistaken for an abandoned one.
• You refund the order. If the refund returns the full value to the Shopify gift card, the app deactivates it, restores their Paytronix balance instead, and tags the order Gift card reversal. If it returns only part, the app puts back just that part.

You can also force a reversal by hand, from a card's Transaction history. The confirmation tells you what will happen before it does anything.

Force-reversing a redemption the customer already spent gives them their Paytronix balance back on top of an order they have already received. The app allows it, because sometimes that is what you intend, but it is money out of your pocket. Reversing an unspent redemption is the ordinary, harmless case.

• A gift card was bought but never issued. Check the product's SKU is exactly digital-gift-card on that variant, and that you have unsold cards left.
• A card was sold but no email arrived. Look for a Waiting on an Email Address section on the Gift Cards page, which catches orders that arrived without a usable address, such as phone-only, point of sale, and draft orders. Enter an address there and it sends within a few minutes. If that section is not showing, run the SMTP test instead.
• A customer cannot redeem their card. Check the card's status is not Disabled, and that your Environment matches where the card was issued. A lab card will not redeem in Production, and vice versa.
• The balance block is missing from your storefront. It has to be added to your theme by hand. See step 8.
• The redeem form is missing at checkout. It has to be added in the checkout editor. See step 9.
• A customer's Paytronix balance looks too low right after an order. That is expected for up to about an hour. The unspent value is sitting on a Shopify gift card and comes back on its own.

If something on this page does not match what you are seeing, or a card has ended up somewhere this guide does not explain, email support@maltertech.com.

Include the order number or the card code. Either one lets us find the exact record and tell you what happened to it, which usually turns a long thread into a single reply.