Merrco/Paystone Gift Cards

BLAZE integrates with Merrco and Paystone to provide gift card solutions.

Note: currently Merrco/Paystone gift cards are only supported on Tablet POS.

The cannabis retail industry has become more competitive with the release of more licenses. Therefore stores are looking for ways to differentiate themselves. Gift cards are an excellent way to keep a customer within your store's ecosystem.

How much does it cost?

Paystone will charge a $350 setup fee and a monthly recurring fee of $30/month. Cards can be purchased from them at an average price of $1/card for 500 cards. Learn more at https://www.paystone.com/pricing.

How do I get started with Merrco/Paystone?

1. Contact Merrco indicating your interest in using their gift card solution. They will get back to you with further instructions on connecting with Paystone, their third-party gift card processor of choice. Merrco pay also require you to perform an update to your PIN terminals.

2. Receive and set up your Paystone dashboard account

3. Order physical gift cards from Paystone

4. Ensure your Merrco terminal firmware is updated (v.112)

How do I set up gift cards in BLAZE?

1. Log into your BLAZE dashboard

2. Go into Settings > Gift cards

3. Enable Gift cards

Once done, this will create a product in your product list called "Merrco gift card". It will start off with 0 inventory. When you receive your first shipment of physical gift cards, you must add inventory to the product in order to see it on your POS.

How do I sell gift cards?

Once you've added inventory to your "Merrco gift card" product, you're ready to sell it on your POS. Search for the product using the search bar, then select it. There will be a prompt asking you how much money you want to load onto the card.

Note: Merrco/Paystone has a $5 minimum and a $250 maximum amount limit on gift cards to minimize accidents and fraud.

Once added to the cart, press checkout. The process will be the same as buying regular products from your store, with the only difference being a gift card activation stage afterwards.

Activating gift cards

When you tap on the gift card product, a pop up will appear titled “Set product price”. Here you can select: Activate or Reload.

1. Select “Activate” *This will subtract 1 inventory unit from your gift card inventory to account for the physical card being sold to the customer.

2. Enter in the “Product price” or the dollar value being placed onto the gift card.

3. Tap on “Submit”

4. Swipe the physical card on the Merrco terminal so the barcode is identified.

5. On the POS, tap on “Activate” to complete the activation process.

Reloading gift cards

When you tap on the gift card product, a pop up will appear titled “Set product price”. Here you can select: Activate or Reload.

Note: Reloading a gift card does not require you to activate or reactivate the physical card.

1. Select “Reload” *This will not impact inventory levels because no physical card is being sold to the customer.

2. Enter in the “Product price” or the dollar value being placed onto the gift card.

3. Tap on “Validate Card”

4. Swipe the physical card on the Merrco terminal so the barcode is identified.

5. Merrco will provide you with a confirmation message stating that the card was previously activated and can be reloaded.

6. Tap on “Submit”

7. On the POS, tap on “Reload” to complete the reloading process.

How do I adjust a gift card's value?

At the moment, manual adjustments of gift card values must be done on the Paystone dashboard. That dashboard can be accessed here: https://app.paystone.com/auth/login.

To deactivate a gift card:

1. Go to "Cards", and search for your gift card number

2. Select your card, and click "New adjustment"

3. Adjust your gift card amount so that the final balance is 0

4. Go back to the "Cards" page, and search for your gift card number

5. Click "Change status", then "Validate"

6. Select the card status, then select "Inactive"

To adjust a gift card's value, follow the deactivation steps, but finish at step 3 by setting the final balance to be your desired amount.

How do I accept gift cards as a payment method?

Gift cards are treated as a regular payment option, similar to cash and cards. Once you have enabled gift cards in your company settings, you will see the "gift card" payment option on the POS. Click "charge" and then select "gift card" as the payment type. Check the balance of the card to make sure there are funds available and then complete the transaction.

How do I refund back to a gift card?

If a sale was made using a gift card, you will be able to refund the amount back to the gift card. Note that you cannot refund more than the value of the sale.

1. Go to the Sales screen on your POS and select the payment you wish to refund for.

2. Set the refund amount.
Please note that you must use the same gift card used to make the original payment and the refund amount must not exceed the originally redeemed amount.

3. Press the refund button to go to the "Process Transactions" screen.
4. Press "Submit" and follow the instruction on your terminal.

How do I view reports on gift cards?

Gift card sales activities can be viewed in your BLAZE dashboard under Reports > Analytics in the following reports:

1. Summary

   1. Gift card sales, refunds, and discounts (overview)

   2. Gift card payment types used for redemptions (payment types)

2. Financials

   1. Gift card sales, refunds, and discounts

3. Payment types

   1. Gift cards used for redemptions

4. Gift cards

   1. Activations, redemptions, discounts, and refunds along with the corresponding dollar values.

Activations, redemptions, discounts, and refunds along with the corresponding dollar values.

It's important to note that gift card sales, refunds and discounts will be recorded separately from your product sales and therefore are not included in your gross and net sales calculations. This is because gift card sales, refunds and discounts are considered a liability until activated and used for purchases.

Gift card redemptions are included in the Gross and Net Sales. The full value of the sale will be claimed. Ex: if you bought a $20 product with $5 of that purchase paid for with a gift card, the sale will show up as a $20 sale. The amount utilized on the gift card will be included in the payment types and gift card reports.

Troubleshooting

What happens if there was an error activating the gift card?

If there is an unexpected error when activating your gift card (internet outage, payment processor error, BLAZE error, etc.) you will have to make a refund or partial refund back to the customer.

Press the "Having issues activating your card?" button on the bottom-right hand side of the screen to exit the card activation process, select your sale, and perform the refund back to the customer.

I accidentally chose to activate the gift card, but I need to reload the card.

1. After you enter in the dollar value, you will see the amount, “Activate”, and “Reload”. The “Activate” button appears in a darker green while the “Reload” button appears in a lighter green.

2. Click on the light “Reload” button. A pop-up message will appear allowing you to select reload instead of activating the card. If the user selects “OK”, this will not impact the inventory levels.

I accidentally chose to reload the gift card, but I need to activate the card.

1. After you enter in the dollar value, you will see the amount, “Activate”, and “Reload”. The “Reload” button appears in a darker green while the “Activate” button appears in a lighter green.

2. Click on the light “Activate” button. A pop-up message will appear allowing you to select activate instead of reloading the card. If the user selects “OK”, this will impact the inventory levels and subtract 1 unit.