Gift Cards

What is a Gift Card?

A Gift Card is a physical card that customers can purchase in-store.

The Gift Card process includes issuing the cards, depositing additional funds onto the card, checking the card balance, and processing transactions made with them.

Each Gift Card purchased in-store comes preloaded with a set value, which can be used to buy items at the same store, up to the card's available balance. All Gift Card transactions are handled through a real-time transaction processing system.

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Note:

The IPP onboarding team would need to onboard a merchant on the platform in order to make use of the Gift Card functionality.

How Do Gift Cards Work?

Process Description:

Step 1:

When a gift card request is initiated on the MPOS App, the first step before processing the request, is to check if an authentication token is available in the request.

If there is an auth token available, then the gift card request will continue as per normal.

If there is no auth token available, then the MPOS App will need to do a RETAIL_AUTH request in order to obtain a valid auth token, before a gift card request can be performed.

Step 2:

The MPOS App will initiate a gift card request, the gift card request request will be sent to the Ecentric Payment App.

Step 3:

The Ecentric Payment App will process the card details and forward the gift card request to Ecentric's Server.

Step 4:

The Ecentric Server will validate the auth token in the request.

NOTE: If the auth token is not validated, the Ecentric Server will return an "invalid auth token" error to the Ecentric Payment App, and the transaction will be aborted.

Step 5:

The Ecentric Server will send a financial message to the Acquirer.

Step 6:

The Acquirer will the perform the necessary checks in order to validate and process the gift card request.
Once the validation of the gift card request has been performed, the Acquirer will respond with a financial message to the Ecentric Server, which contains the gift card response.

Step 7:

The Ecentric Server will return the gift card response to the Ecentric Payment App.

Step 8:

The Ecentric Payment App will then forward the gift card response to the MPOS App.

Step 9:

The MPOS App will be able to display the gift card response to the customer.

Gift Card Functions

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Note

Only standard sale transactions are permitted when using a Gift Card. Customers cannot request cashback or perform cashback only transactions using a Gift Card.

MPOS - Companion API (App v2.0.0+)

• Sale Transaction: To use the gift card funds to make payment for goods and services in store.
• Deposit: To top up the available balance on the gift card.
• Balance Enquiry: To check the available balance on the gift card.

Remote POS - POSBuddy Plugin

C# Library - API Reference Section:

• Sale Transaction: PbResult DoSale
• Deposit: PbResult DoDeposit
• Balance Enquiry: PbResult DoBalanceEnquiry

JavaScript Library - API Reference Section:

• Sale Transaction: doSale
• Deposit: doDeposit
• Balance Enquiry: doBalanceEnquiry