New gift card fees clarification

Questions
1

I recently received the email with subject “Upcoming pricing changes to Square Gift Cards” that said in part:

For developers and partners that have integrated with our Gift Cards API, this means that the load fee will be charged to a seller for any API call that adjusts or otherwise updates a Square gift card’s balance, including instances where a 3P developer uses an external payments provider to process payments but uses Square Gift Cards to manage reporting or accounting.

In the interest of transparency, I would like to understand if ALL balance affecting transactions will result in fees, or only some of them.

Is Square able to indicate which of the following gift_card_activity GiftCardActivityType transactions are subject to the 2.5% fee?

  • ACTIVATE
  • LOAD
  • REDEEM
  • CLEAR_BALANCE
  • DEACTIVATE
  • ADJUST_INCREMENT
  • ADJUST_DECREMENT
  • REFUND
  • UNLINKED_ACTIVITY_REFUND

(I omitted the GiftCardActivityType values that are not available to the API).

If fee determination is based on more than just the GiftCardActivityType then please explain.

Thanks

2

If the balance is adjusted then they’re subject to the fee is the best way to look at it. :slightly_smiling_face:

3

Thanks @Bryan-Square

I have a couple of follow up questions.

The FAQ post says:
image

Are you saying that API refunds are treated differently than Register/Dashboard/etc refunds?

And, the FAQ also says that only balance increasing transactions will be subject to this fee, so I would expect that REDEEM and ADJUST_DECREMENT, etc. transactions would NOT be subject to the fee.

Can you clarify this?

Thanks

4

Square should add information about the 2.5% gift card fee to the developer docs. We built a feature that plugs into gift cards in late 2023 which turned out to be terrible timing because the 2.5% fee more or less kills the feature. That was unlucky for us. Now the fee exists and developers should be made aware that there is a signifcant new expense associated with gift card loading activities.

I dont see any mention of the fee on these pages:

1 Like
5

We’re constantly working to improve our features based on feedback like this, so I’ll be sure to share your request to the API product team. :slightly_smiling_face: