How to sell gift cards on Shopify for Christmas 2026 (and keep selling after the last shipping day)

To sell gift cards on Shopify for Christmas, create a gift card product with three to five amounts, turn on the recipient form in your theme so buyers can pick 25 December as the send date, and promote the cards hard from the day your carriers stop promising Christmas delivery. All of it is built into Shopify. An app only matters if you want designed emails, longer scheduling or bulk sending.

In the NRF's 2025 holiday survey, 43% of consumers planned to give gift cards, second only to clothing and accessories, and gift card spending was forecast at 29.1 billion USD. For a small store the useful point is timing, because a digital card is the one product you can still sell on 24 December.

The Christmas 2026 calendar for gift card sellers

Christmas Eve 2026 is a Thursday, Christmas Day a Friday and Boxing Day a Saturday.

The USPS dates come from its 2026 holiday shipping page. UPS keeps its year-end schedule on its holiday schedule page, and UK stores should check Royal Mail's last posting dates. Add your packing time to your own carrier's date to set the day you switch.

How to sell gift cards on Shopify: the setup

Gift cards are available on all Shopify plans, so there is nothing to install. Six steps:

1. Create the product. Go to Products, Gift cards, and click Add a gift card product (Shopify help). Use a clear title, such as "Gift card, delivered by email", and an image that looks like a present.
2. Choose the denominations. Each amount is a variant, up to 10,000 USD. The NRF found shoppers aged 65 and over expected to spend 58 USD per card, about 5 USD more than the average (NRF), so 25, 50, 75, 100 and 150 covers most budgets. Shoppers can't type a custom amount online; for odd amounts, create a draft order and issue the card after payment.
3. Turn on the recipient form. In Online Store, Themes, open the editor, preview the gift card product, click the Buy buttons block and select "Show recipient information form for gift card products" (Shopify help). It works on the Dawn and Horizon theme families (Shopify's free Online Store 2.0 themes from version 9.0.0), not on vintage themes.
4. Leave expiry off. In gift card settings you can add an expiry, but several US states ban it on cards people pay for. Our guide to gift card expiration laws goes through them.
5. Place a test order. Buy a card for yourself with a send date and check both emails: "New gift card" for the recipient and the receipt for the buyer. If you ever edited notification templates, Shopify says to check they include the recipient fields.
6. Make it findable. Link the card from your main menu and footer, not only from a collection page.

How to sell gift cards on Shopify POS

Activate gift cards as a payment method in the POS app, then tap Add gift card on the smart grid, choose a digital card, pick a preset or custom amount and check out (Shopify help). The card is emailed to the customer or printed on the receipt printer. Cards sold in POS and online work in both places.

Shopify gift cards send to recipient: scheduling Christmas morning delivery

The recipient form adds four fields: the recipient's email, an optional name, an optional message and a send date. Shopify's developer docs set two limits worth putting in your product description:

• A card can be scheduled up to 90 days ahead. For Christmas Day, that window opened in late September, so it won't bite this season.
• The message is capped at 200 characters.

Scheduled cards go out "approximately between 4:00 am–10:00 am in the purchasing customer's timezone", according to the help centre. That is Christmas morning, so say it on the page: "Choose 25 December and the card arrives on Christmas morning." Early buyers worry about a card turning up a week before the day, and the send date answers that.

There is one catch. The form's validation doesn't support accelerated checkout buttons such as Shop Pay or Apple Pay on the product page. Shopify's advice is to use it with Add to cart only, so check how your theme behaves on the gift card product.

GiftmintGift cards with emails that carry your logo, delivery on the day the buyer picks and a balance check in your store.See how it works

The native email is Shopify's notification template. You can add your logo and an accent colour in the notification settings, and anything more means editing its code. Card designs the buyer can choose are what gift card apps add. We build Shopify apps, and one of them is Giftmint. It sends a branded email at 9:00 in your store's timezone on the chosen day, up to a year ahead, and adds a balance check on your store and gift card sales in POS. It is still in development, so if you want it when it launches, join the launch list. For this Christmas, our comparison of Shopify gift card apps lists what the established apps do and charge.

Last minute gift cards: how to keep selling after the last shipping day

Every December there is a day when your products stop being Christmas presents. From then on, shoppers look for digital gift cards for Christmas. On the morning after your carrier cutoff:

• Change the announcement bar to "Too late to ship? Our gift cards arrive by email in minutes", linked to the gift card product.
• Swap the homepage hero. Put the gift card in the first screen, with "pick 25 December for Christmas morning" under the button.
• Add a line on physical products near the price: "Won't arrive by 25 December? Send a gift card instead."
• Send one email, subject along the lines of "Still need a present? Ours arrives in minutes", to your whole list, and again on 23 December to people who opened but didn't buy.
• Update your FAQ and support replies. "Can I still get something by Christmas?" will fill your inbox for a week.

Corporate and bulk gift card orders

December brings companies that want 30 cards for staff or clients. Native Shopify handles it, by hand:

1. Agree the amounts and quantity, then create a draft order so the company pays one invoice.
2. After payment, issue each card from Products, Gift cards, Create gift card, adding the employee's email (Shopify help). Cards created this way are capped at 2,000 USD each by default.
3. Add an internal note with the company name, so you can find the batch in January.

For repeated rules, such as "send a 25 USD card when an order over 500 USD is paid", Shopify suggests Shopify Flow with an order trigger and a gift card action. Giftmint's Business plan will add bulk issuing from a spreadsheet.

Cards not marketed to the general public can fall outside US federal gift card rules, but the official interpretation of Regulation E says that doesn't apply if the card can also be bought through retail channels. Cards from your public store are ordinary gift cards, even when a company buys them.

Bonus gift card offers: the margin maths

"Buy a 100 USD card, get 20 USD free" is a classic December offer. Shopify supports two native versions: a discount on the gift card product, or a buy X get Y discount that includes a free gift card (Shopify help). Discounts that target a collection don't apply to gift cards in it, so target the product itself.

They cost you different amounts. Assume a 50% gross margin, so 100 USD of goods costs you 50 USD:

The bonus is cheaper than the discount even when fully spent, because you give away 20 USD of goods at cost (10 USD) instead of 20 USD of cash. It also brings a second visit in January.

Two cautions. For stores created on or after 12 May 2025, orders paid with a gift card are charged third-party transaction fees on the gift card amount (Shopify help), so use your own plan's numbers. And keep purchased and promotional value apart.

Promotional vs purchased value in the US

Federal law (Regulation E, 1005.20) requires purchased gift card funds to last at least five years, but excludes loyalty, award and promotional cards. To be excluded, a promotional card has to state on its front that it is promotional and show its expiry date. In practice:

• Issue the bonus as a separate card, never by topping up the paid card.
• If the bonus should expire, issue it yourself in the admin with the expiry date set, and say "Promotional" and the date in the email, for example "valid 1 to 31 January 2027". A free gift card product from a buy X get Y discount is emailed like any other card.
• The simplest option is no expiry on the bonus either. Before adding one, check your states. Our gift card expiration laws guide lists the exceptions for promotional cards, which differ from state to state; California, for example, wants the expiry printed on the front.

After Christmas: Boxing Day and January redemption

December's cards are spent from 25 December onwards, and Boxing Day falls on a Saturday this year. Before you close for the holiday:

• Keep stock for January. Gift card holders come back to spend, and they buy less if your bestsellers sold out in December.
• Make the balance easy to find. Customers check the balance on the gift card page linked from their email, and in Apple Wallet if you switched passes on (Shopify help). There is no box in your store to type a code, so explain this on a short "Got a gift card?" page.
• Tell people they can split it. A balance can be spent across several orders, and several cards can be used on one order.

Gift returns: offer store credit, not refunds

Retailers surveyed by the NRF expected 17% of holiday sales to be returned in 2025. When a recipient returns a gift, the order belongs to the buyer, so a normal refund sends the money back to the buyer, and the person who brought the item back leaves with nothing.

Store credit fixes this. Add credit to the recipient's own customer account from the admin, or refund the order to store credit when the buyer is the one returning. It needs new customer accounts and a signed-in customer. Our guide on how to give store credit on Shopify has the steps, and Shopify gift cards vs store credit explains when each one fits.

Christmas gift card checklist

• Gift card product with 3 to 5 amounts, no expiry, recipient form tested on mobile.
• Your carriers' send-by dates, plus packing time, in the calendar.
• Announcement bar, homepage and email ready for the day after the cutoff.
• Draft order routine for corporate orders.
• Bonus cards as separate cards, with any expiry stated.
• "Got a gift card?" page, support replies and store credit ready for January.

That is how to sell gift cards on Shopify without an app, and most of it fits in an afternoon in November. For the rest of the holiday calendar, from discounts to the code freeze, see our Shopify Black Friday 2026 checklist.

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