Frequently asked questions about Toast Gift Cards — including how to set them up, sell physical cards and eGift cards, find balances and reports, resend a gift card a guest didn't receive, and troubleshoot common errors. These answers apply to users of the Toast Gift Card module — not to third-party gift card partners or non-integrated cards.

Order Toast Gift Cards

Note: If a guest didn't receive their eGift card email, the fastest fix is in "" below.

Toast tracks gift card liability between locations in a restaurant group using the Gift Card Liabilities report in Toast Web. Note: Tracking on gift card liability is not available on third-party gift cards. The report shows every transaction connected to both the store that owns the card's liability and the store that redeemed the amount. The redemption store is always owed the redemption value for accepting the original store's gift card and honoring that liability. For multi-location restaurant groups, use this report to periodically audit how much each store owes the others.

Single-location restaurants can view a simpler version of this data by navigating to Toast Web > Reports > Marketing > Guest Summary — the "Guests, Gift Cards, and Loyalty Summary" report provides starting liability, ending liability, and net liability change without the multi-location breakdown.

For the full breakdown of every gift card report, see Gift Card Reports Overview.

Yes — guests can check their gift card balance through your online eGift card shop. The balance-check link is the same as your Buy E-Gift Cards link with Check Balance available in the top right of the page.

If your restaurant uses Toast Online Ordering, the gift card balance-check link also appears at the top of your online ordering page. To find the link to share with your guests, navigate to Toast Web > Takeout & delivery > Restaurant info. The Buy E-Gift Cards and E-Gift Lookup links appear on the right side of the page under Share Your Public Links. You can also find them at Toast Web > Payments > Gift cards > Gift card setup.

For full balance-check guidance, see the "Add Value or Check a Toast Gift Card Balance" section of Manage Toast Gift Card Sales.

Yes — Toast gift cards are redeemable as payment for Toast Online Ordering orders. At checkout, guests select Pay with a Gift Card and enter the 16-digit gift card number. Guests can add another payment method to cover any remaining balance on the check.

Note: Guests cannot use Toast Gift Cards on orders submitted through third-party integrations such as DoorDash, Grubhub, or Uber Eats.

To learn more, see Redeem a Toast Gift Card for Online Orders & Local by Toast.

Toast cannot guarantee swipe compatibility for third-party gift cards. In most cases, Toast can adjust the system to accept them, but this varies by card and by the encoding format used by your previous vendor. Some cards imported from a previous vendor will only be able to be keyed in at the POS using the keypad, not swiped through the card reader.

For details on which physical cards are compatible, see Physical Gift Card Compatibility. If you have a specific card type to confirm, contact Customer Care.

Toast gift card payments must be voided on a Toast POS device — they cannot be voided in Toast Web. After voiding, you can view the voided gift card payment in Toast Web using the Find Checks feature or the Gift Card Balances report.

For step-by-step instructions, see Void Toast Gift Card Payments on Online Orders.

You cannot change the delivery date for a gift card that has already been purchased. To send a gift card on a different date:

Expected outcome: A new eGift card is queued for delivery on the new date and the original purchase is fully voided.

No — Toast gift cards do not have an expiration date. You can deactivate a card manually if needed by using the Gift Card Balances report in Toast Web (open the Card Details window and select Edit in the upper left).

To learn how to deactivate or reactivate a card, see Manually Add and Adjust Gift and Rewards Balances and Reactivate a Deactivated Gift Card.

When a guest purchases an eGift card, Toast sends them an email containing a QR code and the 16-digit gift card number. To redeem:

Note: Only Toast Go® handheld devices and Toast-issued scanners can scan eGift card QR codes. Other scanners may not be compatible.

Yes. Your location can be removed from the shared Gift Card and Loyalty group used by the rest of the restaurant group. After removal:

Note: You cannot share Loyalty but not share Gift Cards. You either share both or share neither.

To learn more about removing your location from a shared group, see Create, View, and Edit Location Groups.

Yes — every location with an active Toast Gift Card module is searchable in the Local by Toast app.

No — a guest cannot use a gift card as a payment method to purchase another gift card.

Yes — you can disable the option to purchase gift cards with rewards points.

Expected outcome: Guests can no longer apply rewards points (or any check-level discount) to gift card purchases.

Note: This setting controls all discounts on gift cards — there is no way to disable rewards-point discounts on gift cards while keeping other discounts enabled.

No — on the POS, any user with POS access permissions can add value to a gift card. There is no permission that restricts add-value to managers only.

However, you can restrict who can manually adjust a gift card balance in Toast Web. The 3.3 Gift Card Adjustment permission controls which jobs and employees can manually adjust a gift card balance in Gift Card Balances. For details on user permissions, see Permissions Reference Guide.

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If a guest didn't receive their eGift card email, you can resend it from Toast Web. First, ask the guest to check their spam folder and confirm that:

If the email is still missing, resend the eGift card:

Expected outcome: Toast re-sends the gift card email to the address already on the card details. To send to a different email address, follow the "Resend Toast eGift Cards Sent to the Wrong Email Address" section of Resend Toast eGift Cards.

If the original email address was valid but the guest still didn't receive the email, the order will not appear in the Failed e-gift card delivery report — use the steps above instead.

For the full resend workflow (including SMS resend and locating cards by check number, credit card, or date), see Resend Toast eGift Cards.

To find a gift card balance or details when you have the gift card number:

To find a gift card by check number or credit card (when you don't have the gift card number):

To find a gift card by date and amount (when you don't have a check number either):

Expected outcome: The Card Details window opens with the card balance, recipient email, transaction history, and PIN (if applicable).

For all lookup variations, see Resend Toast eGift Cards.

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Six gift card reports are available in Toast Web at Toast Web > Reports > Payments:

Note: You must have the 4.4 Gift/Rewards Cards Reports user permission to view gift card reports. See Permissions Reference Guide.

Note: Gift card sales appear in your books as deferred revenue (a liability), not as recognized revenue, until the card is redeemed. This is by design — Toast follows standard gift card accounting practice. To track redemption-side revenue, use the Gift Card Transactions report and pivot on redemption rows.

For the full reports breakdown, including column definitions and how to find your liability at a specific point in time, see Gift Card Reports Overview.

To comp or discount a gift card sale, you first need the Allow Gift Cards to be Discounted? setting enabled at Toast Web > Payments > Payment methods > Payment options. After that:

Note: Enabling discounts on gift cards lets guests apply rewards points to gift card purchases as well. There is no way to allow comps on gift cards but disallow rewards-point redemptions on gift cards.

For details, see Add a Promo or Discount eGift Card Sales.

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Yes — you can enable gift cards in Toast Web at any time. However, gift cards are not valid until you are live and out of Test Mode. Sales made in Test Mode do not count and the cards have no real value.

Yes — Toast can pre-load cards if you provide a list of card numbers and balance amounts. You can also order pre-loaded cards directly from eCard Systems by emailing orders@ecardsystems.com with:

No — live gift cards cannot be seen or used while in Test Mode. If a gift card was sold in Test Mode, the sale does not count and the card has no real value. To sell gift cards with real value, you must disable Test Mode.

If you plan to sell gift cards online only, hardware installation isn't required, but Test Mode must be disabled. You can copy your eGift card link from Toast Web and place it on your website for guests to buy online. If you sell in-store, at least one terminal must be set up and Test Mode disabled.

Important: Disabling Test Mode makes your account live and your monthly billing begins.

To learn how, see Test Mode Overview.

Yes. By default, the eGift card purchase limit is set to $500 per transaction. Physical gift cards purchased in-store have a value limit of $2,000.

You can decrease (but not always increase) these limits at Toast Web > Payments > Payment methods > Payment options > Gift Card section. To learn how, see Adjust Your Gift Card Purchase Limit. If you need to sell more than $500 in eGift cards to a single guest, see Sell Gift Cards Over $500.

If you only want to disable online eGift card sales, you can hide the Buy E-Gift Cards link from your online ordering page without disabling physical gift cards on the POS. To do this, contact Customer Care to confirm the correct configuration steps for your account.

To fully disable all gift cards (physical and eGift):

Expected outcome: Gift cards (physical and eGift) are no longer available for sale or redemption at your location.

The Gift Card payment option typically disappears for one of these reasons:

If none of these apply, contact Customer Care for a configuration review. See also Get Help with Gift Card Error: Gift Cards Not Set Up.

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To import gift cards from a previous provider, see Import Gift Cards.

Toast can import the following data from a previous provider:

Toast cannot import:

To ensure your guests' gift card experience is unaffected during the transition to Toast, Toast needs the most up-to-date data on all of your existing gift cards (active and inactive). Without this data, your existing cards won't be recognized in the Toast POS and guests won't be able to purchase, add value, check balances, or redeem them.

Toast needs the following:

You typically obtain this data by contacting your previous gift card provider (Mercury, Heartland, Paytronix, and others) and requesting the report. Some providers let you log in and run the report yourself. Request the report on or as close to your Toast go-live date as possible.

Note: If you're submitting inactive cards (cards that have never been sold), Toast requires only the full unmasked card numbers.

Depending on volume, complexity, and reformatting needed, the import can take 3-4 weeks.

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If you're seeing a specific error message on your POS or Toast Web, see the matching error article below for the fastest resolution path.

If you're having trouble selling a gift card, see I'm Having Trouble Selling a Gift Card. What Should I Do? for the full troubleshooting flow. Common causes include a disabled Gift Card module, a misconfigured payment option, or a Test Mode mismatch.

If you've recently migrated from a previous gift card provider, the most common reason gift cards aren't working is that your previous Gift Card Liability report for both active (sold) and inactive (unsold) gift cards was not imported into the Toast database. If the import was incomplete, sold cards won't be redeemable and unsold cards won't be sellable.

To check whether your cards were imported:

Expected outcome: If the card appears in the matching report, the import succeeded — try the transaction again. If the card doesn't appear, the import didn't complete; contact Customer Care to re-submit the import. See also Import Gift Cards.

If you're having trouble swiping gift cards, contact Customer Care to conduct a swipe test on a sample card. Toast cannot guarantee swipe compatibility for cards encoded by a previous vendor — see Physical Gift Card Compatibility.

eCard Systems prints and ships every Toast-ordered physical gift card. If you haven't received your order, eCard Systems should have sent you a tracking email. If you didn't get the tracking email, contact eCard Systems directly at 1-866-776-7409 ext. 1.

No — there's no way to "un-void" a selection on an order, including a gift card. You can resell the same gift card to the guest. When you void a selection (including a gift card), the payment for the gift card itself remains on the check unless it is separately voided, removed, or refunded.

If only one guest is having an issue purchasing an eGift card online (for example, a payment error at checkout), the issue is usually an authorization problem with the guest's card issuer. The guest needs to contact their bank or card issuer. Toast cannot resolve card authorization issues on the guest's behalf.

If no guests can purchase eGift cards, the issue is usually a setup or configuration problem. Follow the steps in Get Started With Toast Gift Cards to confirm your Toast Gift Cards module is set up correctly.

Common reasons a single guest can't purchase a gift card:

For the Card Not Authorized error specifically, see Get Help with Gift Card Error: Card Not Authorized.

In standard behavior, a gift card does not activate until the transaction is completed successfully. If the guest's payment method is declined, the gift card should not be loaded with value. If you suspect a gift card was activated despite a declined sale, check the Gift Card Balances report and contact Customer Care.

Refunding an online order paid with a gift card returns the refunded amount to the gift card balance. The eGift card itself is not invalidated by the refund — the guest can continue to use any remaining balance.

If the refund is for the eGift card purchase itself (not for an order paid with the eGift card), the gift card balance is removed and the card is no longer usable. For details, see Adjust or Refund Gift Card Balance.

To resend an eGift card to a corrected email address, see the "Resend Toast eGift Cards Sent to the Wrong Email Address" section of Resend Toast eGift Cards. If the misspelled email failed delivery, the order will appear in the Failed e-gift card delivery report at Toast Web > Reports > Payments > Failed e-gift card delivery — select the order, enter the correct email, and select Update & Resend Email.

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