Digital gift card software for small businesses
Built for independent restaurants, cafés, salons, spas, and retail. Sell digital gift cards online in minutes — no hardware, no apps, no setup fee. Money hits your Stripe account instantly, before you lift a finger.
A Bankrate/YouGov survey of 2,373 US adults in 2024 found 43% were holding at least one unused gift card, worth $244 each on average. Selling your own is how you get into that pocket instead of a competitor's.
First Data's 2018 Prepaid Consumer Insights study of more than 2,000 US consumers found the average recipient spends $59 above the value of the card — the difference comes out of their own pocket, on your counter.
Customers can purchase and send a digital gift card in under 60 seconds from your storefront — no app download, no account required. Share your link and start selling today.
Unlike third-party gift card platforms that take 5–15% per transaction, Shopolo only takes a small platform fee from your settlement. No marketplace cut. No annual listing fees.
Live in under 10 minutes
Set fixed denominations ($25, $50, $100) or let customers enter a custom amount. Add a description — optional. That's it.
Your branded storefront is live at shopolo.app/your-business. Put it in your Instagram bio, your email footer, a counter card. Customers click and buy.
Payment hits your Stripe account within seconds of purchase. The customer receives a digital gift card by email with a unique redemption code.
When a customer comes in, look up their code in the dashboard and mark it redeemed. Partial redemptions are tracked automatically.
Who uses Shopolo gift cards?
Any visit-based business where customers want to give the gift of experience. The most common use cases:
Gift card software vs. a standalone POS add-on
Most gift card processing you’ll find is bolted onto a point-of-sale system — an extra module on Square, Clover, or Toast that only works with their hardware and adds its own monthly fee on top. Shopolo is gift card management software on its own: no POS to buy into, no terminal, no separate module fee. You set up your gift card program — denominations, any bonus promotions — once in your dashboard, and it runs from any device with a browser. If you already run a POS and just want its bundled gift card add-on, that’s a reasonable path; if you want gift cards without committing to a POS at all, that’s what Shopolo is built for.
What gift card software costs
Two numbers decide what you pay: a flat monthly plan fee, and a platform percentage taken from each gift card you sell. There is no per-card charge, no setup fee, no monthly minimum, and no annual contract. Prices below are USD — see pricing for your local currency.
Two costs are not on that list, and both matter when you compare quotes. Stripe charges its own card-processing fee, billed by Stripe directly at its published rate for your country — nobody selling gift cards online avoids that one. And hardware is zero here, which is usually where POS-based gift card programs get expensive: Clover devices run $49 to $1,649 each before any software fee. Shopolo needs no terminal, so the comparison is plan fee plus percentage against plan fee plus percentage plus hardware.
Frequently asked questions
Customers visit your Shopolo storefront, pick a gift card amount, enter the recipient's email, and pay via Stripe. The recipient instantly receives a digital gift card by email with a unique redemption code. You can redeem it from your dashboard when the customer visits.
Gift cards on Shopolo do not have a mandatory expiration date. You can configure expiry in your dashboard if local law requires it, but by default they remain active indefinitely.
All payments go through Stripe Checkout — the same infrastructure used by Amazon and Shopify. Funds are deposited directly into your Stripe account within 2 business days. Shopolo never holds your money.
Yes. Unlike Square, Shopolo does not require POS hardware. You can sell digital gift cards from any device and redeem them with a simple dashboard lookup. Shopolo also charges a lower platform fee than Square's per-transaction rate for gift cards.
Yes. Shopolo provides a hosted storefront at shopolo.app/your-business-name. You can share this link in your Instagram bio, email signature, or on a counter card. No website or custom domain required.
Gift card software is the tool — the checkout, the redemption codes, the payout rails. A gift card program is how you use it: your denominations, any promotions like "buy $50, get $10 bonus," and your redemption rules. Shopolo is the software; the program is whatever you configure in your dashboard on top of it.
On Shopolo it is free — gift cards are included at no charge, with a flat 1.9% platform fee per sale and nothing else (USD). There is no per-card fee, no setup fee, no monthly minimum, and no contract. Stripe bills its own card-processing fee separately at its published rate for your country. Hardware costs nothing because none is required.
Yes — Shopolo manages gift cards entirely from a dashboard, independent of any point-of-sale system. You create, sell, track, and redeem cards from any device with a browser. There's no POS integration to set up and no register hardware required.
The customer pays through a Stripe Checkout page on your Shopolo storefront, the same way they'd pay for anything online. There's no card to swipe and no terminal involved — the gift card itself is a code emailed to the recipient, and you redeem it by looking that code up in your dashboard when they come to spend it.
New to this? Read the full guide on how to sell gift cards for your business — platform choice, fees compared, US expiry law, and where to put the link.
Also included in Shopolo
How payments work
Payments secured by Stripe
Checkout is hosted by Stripe and PCI-compliant. Shopolo never builds its own card form.
Money goes straight to the business
Funds settle into the merchant’s own Stripe account. Shopolo never holds or moves customer money.
Card details never touch Shopolo
Card numbers go directly to Stripe. They are never sent to, processed by, or stored on our servers.
Start selling digital gift cards today
Free forever, no credit card. No hardware required. Your storefront is live in minutes.
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