How to Restrict WooCommerce Gift Card Usage?

Restricting the use of WooCommerce gift cards is an essential feature you want at your disposal. Learn how to limit WooCommerce gift cards with usage restrictions using a gift card plugin.

WooCommerce gift cards are as popular as ever. They help you boost your revenue and maintain a meaningful relationship with your customers. Moreover, a WooCommerce gift card, in itself, is a tool to attract traffic to your website.

As the holiday season approaches, many stores are embracing the use of WooCommerce gift cards due to their growing popularity. However, allowing unrestricted use of these gift cards can lead to chaos in your store. Let’s dig deeper!

Consider this scenario: what if your WooCommerce users use their accrued store credits to purchase gift cards instead of paying for them? This could be catastrophic if you rely on gift card revenue to better your business.

This highlights the importance of imposing restrictions on the purchase and use of WooCommerce gift cards. Due to their non-restrictive nature, gift cards can put a dent in your revenue. Therefore, restricting their usage is the best way to leverage WooCommerce gift cards. And one of the best plugins to help you implement these gift card restrictions is the WooCommerce gift cards plugin from WebToffee.

Moreover, the gift cards in WooCommerce enable customers to purchase store credits instead of physical items. These store credits can then be used to purchase any item worth equal to less than the credit amount in the card. This versatility makes WooCommerce gift cards the perfect substitute for physical gifts.

Let’s take a look at how the gift card plugin works and how to restrict WooCommerce gift card usage with this plugin.

With the WebToffee gift cards plugin for WooCommerce, you can restrict WooCommerce gift cards in the following ways:

• Automatically generate gift cards when order status reaches a certain pre-set value
• Make the gift cards expire at a pre-set time
• Disable the use of gift cards along with other discount coupons
• Disable customers from using store credits to purchase gift cards
• Display only select data on the gift card product pages
• Disable users from scheduling WooCommerce gift cards
• Enable customers to purchase only select items in the store
• Exclude purchasing certain products with gift cards
• Enable purchasing products belonging to specific categories with WooCommerce gift cards
• Exclude purchasing specific product categories with gift cards
• Set minimum and maximum gift card limit
• Enable or disable users from printing WooCommerce gift cards

Now that we are familiar with the WooCommerce gift card restrictions, let’s see how to implement some of them in your WooCommerce store.

Prerequisites:

Install and Activate the WooCommerce gift voucher plugin from WebToffee.

1. Go to your WordPress admin console and click Plugins > Add New.
2. Click on Upload Plugin and choose the plugin zip file.
3. Click on Install Now and then on Activate Plugin.
4. Head on to the Gift Cards tab on the navigation bar. You will have all the WooCommerce gift card restrictions available there.

Scenario 1: Restrict WooCommerce Gift Card Generation

You can configure when the plugin should automatically generate the WooCommerce gift cards.

• Go to Gift Cards > General settings > General. Here, you have the option to select the order statuses that, when reached, automatically generate the gift cards.

Scenario 2: Disable Gift Cards to Be Used With Other Coupons

If you do not want your customers to apply discount coupons when purchasing using the gift card, you can disable them in a few simple steps.

• Go to General settings > General > Gift card usage settings.

Scenario 3: Restrict Purchasing Gift Cards With Store Credits

To disable purchasing of gift cards using the accrued store credits:

• Disable the Allow purchase of gift cards with gift cards/wallet balance option.

Scenario 4: Schedule the Gift Card Expiry

A gift card doesn’t have to stay activated till consumed. You can set an expiration date for gift cards. For example, the gift cards that you offer to your customers as part of a special promotion.

• In the General tab, scroll down to the Set expiry for generated gift cards option. Here, you can set the expiry dates for all gift cards generated in your WooCommerce store.

Scenario 5: Limit the Fields to Be Displayed on the Woocommerce Gift Card Product Page

• Go to General Settings> Product page fields. Here, you will be able to enable or disable the gift card input fields on the product page.

Scenario 6: Enable Users to Schedule Sending Gift Cards

Customers purchasing the gift cards can schedule to send the gift card to the selected recipients at a later time.

• In the General tab, enable the Allow users to schedule option.

Scenario 7: Limit When the Gift Cards Can Be Used

You can specify when a user can apply the gift cards at checkout. That is, you can specify the purchase limits (the maximum cart subtotal to stay qualified to use the gift card). A customer purchasing items worth more than a set sum will not be allowed to use the gift card.

You may also limit the products on which the gift cards can be used. You can include or exclude both products and specific product categories. For example, if you only want the gift card to work when purchasing a specific item, add it under Allowed Products. 

You can configure all these while creating the gift cards.

• Go to Gift card products in the Gift Card window
• Add a new gift card product or click to edit the specific gift card
• In the Product data widget, set the restrictions in the Usage Restrictions tab.
• Click on Update/ Publish to save changes.

The WooCommerce gift card restrictions are put in place to limit how and when a customer can use the gift card. This would make life easier for the store owners and limits the full accessibility of the customers. With the WebToffee gift card plugin, you can set up almost all WooCommerce gift card restrictions that you would need.

Hope this article was of interest to you. Do let us know if you want to know more about this in the comments below.