Migrating to BatchCard

Switching to Shopify does not mean starting your gift card program from zero. If your customers are holding cards from another platform, you can bring those balances into Shopify and keep every card working. This hub covers the concepts that apply to every migration, and links to a step-by-step export guide for each major platform.

Platform guides

Pick your current platform for the exact export steps and the honest caveats specific to it:

• Migrating from Square
• Migrating from Toast
• Migrating from Lightspeed
• Migrating from Clover

On another platform? See Other platforms below for the general approach that works everywhere.

The four things every migration depends on

1. Import the current balance, never the face value

The number you import for each card is its current remaining balance, the amount the customer has left to spend today. It is not the original amount the card was loaded with.

A $100 card that has already been used down to $18.50 must come across as $18.50. If you import the original $100, you have just handed that customer $81.50 of free money and created a liability your books cannot explain. Every platform's export includes a remaining-balance column. Use that column, and confirm the totals before you import.

2. Deactivate on the old platform first, then export, then import

This is the single most important step, and it is the one BatchCard cannot do for you. Gift cards are bearer instruments: whoever holds the code can spend it. If a card is live on both your old platform and Shopify at the same time, a customer can redeem the same balance twice, once in each system.

The only real defense is sequence:

1. Freeze or deactivate the cards on your old platform so no new redemptions can happen there.
2. Export the remaining balances at that moment.
3. Import the file into BatchCard.

Export at the moment of cutover, not days before. Any redemption that happens between your export and your deactivation is a balance you imported that no longer exists.

3. Shopify codes are 8 to 20 letters and numbers

Shopify gift card codes must be 8 to 20 characters, letters and numbers only (case-insensitive). When you import, BatchCard automatically cleans out spaces and dashes, so a code exported as 1234 5678 9012 3456 or 1234-5678-9012-3456 imports cleanly as 1234567890123456.

Anything else cannot be preserved. A code that is shorter than 8 characters, longer than 20, or contains symbols other than spaces and dashes cannot become a Shopify code as-is. Most gift card numbers from the major platforms are 16 numeric digits and carry over unchanged, but always check.

4. If a code cannot carry over, issue a fresh one

When a code falls outside the 8 to 20 letter-and-number rule, you do not lose the card. You replace the code:

1. Remove the code from those rows in your file (or use BatchCard's rejected-rows report, which hands you a fix-and-reupload CSV containing only the rows that need attention).
2. Re-import those rows. With no code supplied, BatchCard generates a fresh, valid Shopify code for each one.
3. Notify those customers of their new code so the card they are holding still works.

This keeps the balance intact even when the original code cannot come along. Never tell customers that every code transfers, because for some cards it will not.

Other platforms

BatchCard imports any gift card data you can get into a spreadsheet, so you are not limited to the four platforms above. The process is the same everywhere:

1. Deactivate or freeze the cards on your current platform.
2. Export your gift card list with, at minimum, each card's code and its current remaining balance. A CSV or XLSX file is ideal.
3. Map the columns during import. BatchCard auto-detects common column names, and you can adjust any mapping by hand.
4. Handle any codes that do not fit the 8 to 20 letter-and-number rule using the fresh-code workflow above.

If your platform only shows masked or last-four card numbers in its standard reports, look for a full-export or third-party-export option, or contact that platform's support to request a full list. You need the complete code to preserve a card.

Ready to import

Once you have your file with codes and current balances, follow the import guide to bring your cards into BatchCard. The CSV and XLSX format reference documents every supported column, including the Code column for preserving existing codes.