Sell, activate, and redeem a Square gift card using the Gift Cards API and Gift Card Activities API as a self-serve alternative to a webhook-based gift card partner integration
domain: developer.squareup.com · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Process the order for the gift card purchase amount through the Orders/Payments API first
Call CreateGiftCard to create a new digital gift card (or register a physical one), then call CreateGiftCardActivity with type ACTIVATE and the initial balance to make it usable
For redemption during a normal sale, if you're using the Payments API to take the gift card as tender, Square automatically records a REDEEM activity and updates the balance
If payment isn't processed through Square's Payments API, manually call CreateGiftCardActivity with type REDEEM after confirming payment success, to keep the balance in sync
Use the Gift Card Activities API to reload, adjust, or void a gift card as needed, always through an activity call rather than mutating balance fields directly
Known gotchas
Balance changes should always go through a Gift Card Activity call — there's no supported direct-write path to a gift card's balance field
Auto-created REDEEM activities only happen when the gift card tender flows through Square's own Payments API; a custom payment path needs the manual redeem call or the balance will drift
This is a fundamentally different integration model from Toast's gift card partner program, where Toast calls out to a partner-hosted endpoint for redeem/reverse — don't assume the two integrate the same way with a shared abstraction
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