Answer
May 14, 2020 - 01:55 PM
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The closest solution to what you have in mind appears to be CashStar, a web platform that promises a “Customized website to sell your own gift card brands and/or other popular gift card and egift brands.” But using CashStar would require you to switch to a non-WordPress platform. Worse, there are many negative reviews online from customers who have bought gift cards via CashStar, which would likely make it hard to make sales with the platform.
That said, there are several highly-rated WooCommerce plugins for gift card sales. However, the problem you’ll run into is that none are specifically designed for reselling e-gift cards from third parties. They’re primarily designed to sell gift cards for the host site, not for other stores and brands.
While there are no simple solutions for your needs, you may be able to make one of the existing plugins work with some effort. Here are some highly-rated WooCommerce plugins that deal with gift cards.
Gift Up!This plugin allows eCommerce sites to design and sell their own gift cards. Gift Up! does charge a 3.49% fee on each gift card purchase, but you could roll that cost into the cost of each gift card if you’d like to avoid paying it. Otherwise, the plugin is free.
Reviewers comment that this plugin is very simple and fast to set up and use. It allows you to sell gift cards in different currencies, set expiration dates, and otherwise customize your offerings, so it may work for your gift card management needs.
Gift Cards by CodeMenschenThe Gift Cards plugin also allows for custom-designed e-gift cards, and lets you assign unique values and expiration dates for each card. The backend tracking system will be helpful for easily tracking the status of each transaction.
Many reviewers praise the support offered by this plugin, so its customer service may be able to help you customize it for third-party selling. However, since this plugin is again designed for eCommerce merchants to sell cards to their own site, there’s no promise that you’ll be able to adjust it for third-party sales.
Ultimate Gift Cards for WooCommerce
With this plugin, you’ll sell gift cards on your site in the same way that you would sell any other product, which might be closer to what you’re looking for. Ultimate Gift Cards sets “gift card” as a product type on your WooCommerce store. However, the fact that it lets customers specify the amount of the card may complicate its usefulness for third-party cards.
Ultimate Gift Cards does let you show gift cards on your shop page, though, which might work well since you’re operating as an e-gift card mall. The reviewers also mention an excellent support system.
YITH WooCommerce Gift Cards
This plugin’s UI is like that of Amazon gift cards: users can choose from preset amounts, specify a message and recipient, and even select an image from a gallery you provide. Since it lets you set gift cards as a product type, it could also work for third-party card sales. There is both a free and premium version of this plugin.
That said, this plugin has more mixed reviews than the others listed here, with some users noting that the best features are only available in the premium version.
Why Are Solutions So Hard to Find?As you can see, there really aren’t any good, simple digital platforms available yet for managing e-gift card resales. You’ll need to find a close-enough solution like one of these, and then customize it to meet your needs.
The reason it’s so hard to find a simple solution is that gift card fraud is common, so e-gift cards are considered high-risk items by most eCommerce platforms. Unfortunately, many resellers offer cards that don’t actually work, while many buyers get gift cards only to do a chargeback after making a purchase.
On some eCommerce platforms, like Shopify, reselling gift cards actually violates the Terms of Service for this reason. These platforms don’t often want to host sales of such a high-risk item.
Of course, there are legitimate e-gift card sellers out there, but it’s the fraudulent ones that make things difficult for the legitimate ones. As gift card fraud continues to routinely make headlines, it’s not likely that an eCommerce platform will want to take on the risk of offering a sleek solution for gift card resellers anytime soon.
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