Gift Cards

Turn your credits into a redeemable, giftable currency — generate coded cards, assign them to customers, and let users redeem, gift and track them.

This is a paid plugin from the in-app Plugins marketplace. It installs free for Extended License holders; on a Regular License you purchase it (or upgrade your license) before installing.

Introduction

Gift Cards turns your credits into a redeemable, giftable currency. From the admin side you generate cards — in bulk, with a code format you control — set how much each is worth and how often it can be used, and either publish open codes anyone can redeem or hand a personal card to a specific customer.

On the user side, customers redeem codes from their profile page, see the cards that belong to them, and can even pass a card on to someone else.

What it adds

• Gift Cards dashboard — admin hub with headline stats plus tables of all cards, redemptions and transfers.
• Create Gift Cards — generate one or many cards with a configurable code format, credit value, usage rules and optional expiry.
• Edit / View card — update value, status, limits, expiry and notes, or inspect a card’s full redemption and transfer history.
• Assign to user — hand a card to a specific existing customer by email, straight from the cards table.
• Plugin configuration — a single switch that shows or hides the feature for your users.
• Profile redeem section — the user-facing panel: redeem a code, view “My gift cards”, transfer a card, and see redemption history.

What a gift card gives the user

When a user redeems a valid code, its value is added to their credit balance as prepaid credits, spendable on any generation across the platform — image, video, copy and every studio — exactly like the credits that come with a plan.

The one deliberate difference: gift credits are not withdrawable. They can be spent but never cashed out through the wallet, so gift value always stays gift value. That means you can hand out credits freely without them turning into a payout liability.

Core concepts

A few rules govern every card, and they’re worth understanding before you start handing them out.

• Value is measured in credits. Each card grants a fixed number of credits when redeemed.
• Credits land instantly in the user’s balance and are spendable on any generation, just like plan credits.
• Gift credits can never be withdrawn. They top up the spendable (prepaid) side of a balance, kept separate from any withdrawable wallet earnings.
• Credited once per redemption. A user is only ever credited once per redemption, and a card can’t be pushed past the limits you set.
• Safe under load. Crediting is atomic, so two people hitting the same code at once can never push it past its allowed uses, and a user can never be over-credited.
• Fully logged. Every redemption and transfer is recorded, giving you a complete audit trail on the dashboard.
• Open vs personal. A card with no assigned user is an open code anyone can redeem; a card assigned to a customer is a personal card only they can redeem — and can transfer.

Installation

Gift Cards is distributed through the in-app plugin marketplace — everything happens inside your MagicAds admin. Because the plugin is fully self-contained, there are no external API accounts, keys or per-transaction fees to worry about.

1. Open the Plugins marketplace

   Sign in as an admin and go to Admin → General Settings → Plugins. Find the Gift Cards card in the marketplace catalog.

2. Install / activate

   Click Install on the Gift Cards card. What happens depends on your license and purchase state:

   • Free / already owned → installs directly.
   • Paid → routes you to the plugin checkout to complete the purchase.
   • Extended License holders → plugins flagged “free for Extended License” install without an extra purchase.

   Behind the scenes the platform wires the plugin’s routes into the app, adds the Gift Cards section to your admin sidebar, and registers a plugin configuration page. The feature starts switched off for users.

   Installing only makes the admin tools available. Your customers won’t see anything until you enable the feature in the plugin configuration (next section) — which lets you generate and stage cards privately before going live.

If the Plugins page shows “This plugin is free only for Extended License holders”, you’re on a Regular License and must purchase Gift Cards (or upgrade your license) to install it.

Once installed, Gift Cards runs entirely on your own installation and the platform’s native credit engine — there’s nothing to connect to and no usage fees.

To remove the plugin later, click Uninstall on the same card.

Configure Gift Cards

Once installed, the Gift Cards section appears in the admin sidebar and a Gift Cards card appears under Admin → General Settings → Plugins. Open the configuration page at Admin → General Settings → Plugins → Gift Cards (/app/admin/general/plugins/giftcards).

Setting	Purpose
Enable Gift Cards	Master switch for the customer-facing side. When on, the redeem section appears on every user’s profile page. When off, users see nothing — but admin management stays fully available so you can prepare cards ahead of a launch. Off by default.

Flip it on when you’re ready for customers to start redeeming, then click Save.

The Gift Cards dashboard shows a live status banner — Active (green) when customers can see the redeem section, or Hidden from users (amber) when they can’t — with a shortcut to the configuration page. Use it to confirm the current state at a glance.

Everyone with an account can redeem and gift cards once the feature is on — access isn’t tied to a specific plan or the free tier, so there’s no per-plan setup to do.

Generating gift cards

Go to Admin → Gift Cards (/app/admin/gift-cards) and click Create Gift Cards. The form is grouped into three parts.

General

Field	Purpose
Card Name (optional)	An internal label for the batch, e.g. “Summer Promo”. Purely for your own organization.
Credits per Card	How many credits each card grants on redemption.
Status	Active cards can be redeemed; Inactive cards can’t (useful for staging or pausing a batch).
Valid Until (optional)	An expiry date. Leave blank for a card that never expires.
Notes (optional)	Free-form internal notes about the batch.

Quantity & usage rules

Field	Purpose
Number of Cards	How many unique codes to generate in this batch (each gets its own distinct code).
Redemptions per Card	How many times a single card can be redeemed in total. Set to 1 for a one-time card, or higher for a shared campaign code.
Limit per User	How many times one individual can redeem the same card. Usually 1, so a single person can’t drain a multi-use code.
Assign to a User (optional)	Enter an existing customer’s email to make the whole batch personal cards owned by that user. Leave empty to create open codes anyone can redeem.

Code format

You control exactly how generated codes look, with a live preview updating as you type. Visually ambiguous characters are left out automatically so codes are easy to read aloud and type.

Field	Purpose
Prefix (optional)	Letters/numbers prepended to every code, e.g. GIFT.
Separator	The character between segments: dash, underscore or dot.
Number of Segments	How many blocks the code is split into (1–8).
Characters per Segment	Length of each block (2–10).

For example, a prefix of GIFT, three segments of five characters and a dash separator produces codes like GIFT-4F9K2-QW7P1. When you click Generate, the platform mints the requested number of unique cards, guarantees no two codes collide, and returns you to the dashboard with a confirmation.

Generating many cards with Redemptions per Card = 1 gives you a stack of single-use codes for a mailing or event. A single card with a high Redemptions per Card and Limit per User = 1 gives you one shareable campaign code that each customer can use once.

Card types: open vs personal

Whether you fill in Assign to a User decides how a card behaves:

• Open codes (no user assigned) — anyone who has the code can redeem it, subject to the total redemptions and per-user limit. Perfect for public promos, newsletters and social campaigns.
• Personal cards (assigned to a user) — only that specific customer can redeem the card. Personal cards can also be transferred: the owner passes an unredeemed card to another user, at which point it becomes theirs. Great for individual rewards, support goodwill and person-to-person gifting.

The dashboard’s Type column labels each card Open or Personal so you can tell them apart at a glance.

Managing gift cards

The Gift Cards dashboard is your control center.

Stats

Four headline tiles summarize the whole system: Total Gift Cards, Active Cards, Total Redemptions, and Credits Granted (the total credits customers have redeemed).

All gift cards

A searchable, sortable table of every card, showing its name, code, credit value, redemption progress (used / allowed), type, status, expiry and creation date. You can filter by status. Each row has an actions menu:

Action	What it does
View	Open the card’s detail page with its full redemption and transfer history.
Edit	Change the value, status, limits, expiry or notes.
Assign to user	Open a dialog to hand this card to a specific customer by email. Hidden once a card is fully redeemed.
Delete	Permanently remove the card.

Assigning a card to a user

From any card’s actions menu, choose Assign to user. A dialog asks for the email of an existing customer. On confirm, the card becomes a personal card owned by that user, and they receive a notification letting them know a gift card is waiting. If the email doesn’t match a user, or the card is already fully redeemed, you’ll get a clear message and nothing changes.

Redemptions & transfers

Below the cards, the Redemptions table logs every redemption — who redeemed, which code, how many credits, and when. Removing a record only clears the log entry; it doesn’t claw back credits already granted. The Transfers table logs every user-to-user hand-off — a reference ID, sender, recipient, card and date — so you always have a full picture of where cards have moved.

Go-live checklist

1. Install the plugin

   Admin → General Settings → Plugins → Gift Cards → Install.

2. Generate some cards

   Admin → Gift Cards → Create Gift Cards. Set the value, code format and usage rules, then Generate.

3. (Optional) Assign personal cards

   Use Assign to user on any card to hand it directly to a specific customer, or set the Assign to a User field during creation.

4. Enable the feature

   Admin → General Settings → Plugins → Gift Cards → turn on Enable Gift Cards and Save. Confirm the dashboard banner shows Active.

5. Verify as a user

   Log in as a customer, open the profile page, and redeem a test code to confirm the credits arrive.

Once every step above is green, Gift Cards is live and customers can start redeeming codes.

Using gift cards as a customer

Once the feature is enabled, every logged-in user gets a Gift cards section on their profile page. It has three parts.

Redeem a code

The user enters a code and clicks Redeem. On success, the credits are added to their balance immediately and a confirmation appears. Clear messages handle every edge case — an unknown code, an expired or inactive card, a card that’s already been fully redeemed, a card that belongs to someone else, or one they’ve already used.

My gift cards

Any personal cards assigned to the user (and not yet redeemed) are listed here. For each one they can:

• Use — drop the code straight into the redeem box.
• Transfer — send the card to another user by email. Once transferred it becomes the recipient’s, and they’re notified. A user can’t transfer a card to themselves, and only unredeemed cards they own can be passed on.

Redemption history

A running list of the codes the user has redeemed, with the credits granted and the date. A small badge also shows the lifetime total of credits they’ve received via gift cards.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
Users don’t see the gift card section	The feature is switched off	Turn on Enable Gift Cards in the plugin configuration; confirm the dashboard banner reads Active.
The Gift Cards admin section is missing	The plugin isn’t installed	Install it from Admin → General Settings → Plugins.
”This gift card code is not valid”	Typo, or the code doesn’t exist	Re-check the code; codes omit ambiguous characters, so watch for look-alikes.
”This gift card is no longer active”	The card’s status is Inactive, or it just reached its redemption limit and auto-closed	Use a different card, or set the status back to Active (if within limits).
”This gift card has expired or is not yet valid”	Current date is outside the card’s validity window	Extend or clear the Valid Until date on the card.
”This gift card has already been fully redeemed”	The card hit its total redemptions	Generate a new card or raise Redemptions per Card on a card that still has room.
”This gift card belongs to another user”	It’s a personal card assigned to someone else	Redeem it from the owner’s account, or transfer/assign it to the right user first.
”You have already redeemed this gift card”	The user hit the per-user limit	Raise Limit per User, or issue them a different card.
”No user was found with that email address” (assign/transfer)	The email doesn’t match an existing account	Confirm the recipient has registered, then use their exact account email.

Redeemed credits are added to the customer’s spendable balance and can be used on any generation, but they can never be withdrawn as cash. Removing a redemption log entry does not remove credits that were already granted.