Gift card expiry
Gift cards either never expire or expire a set number of months after purchase. New Zealand and Australia default to 36 months to match consumer-protection law. You can change the default for your whole store or per-product.
Gift card expiry
By default, Zillo picks your gift card expiry based on your country. New Zealand and Australia default to 36 months because local consumer-protection law requires at least 3 years of validity for gift cards. Other countries default to no expiry.
You can change the default for your whole store, or override it on individual products.
How expiry is set
When you connect your Stripe account, Zillo looks at the country on the account and seeds your default. From then on:
- Change your store default any time at Settings → Storefront. The change applies to future gift cards only.
- Override per product in the gift card product's editor. Useful for shorter-term promotional cards.
- Each card gets stamped with its expiry when issued. So even if you later change the default, existing cards keep the expiry they were sold with.
Changing the default
Open Settings → Storefront and update the Gift card default expiry field. Set it to a number of months, or pick "Never expires".
Already-issued cards keep their original expiry. This is on purpose — customers see the expiry at purchase, and changing it retroactively would erode their trust.
What happens when a card expires
Once a card passes its expiry date:
- The QR / code is rejected at redemption. Staff sees a clear "Gift card expired on DD MMM YYYY" message.
- The customer-visible balance shows "Expired".
- The balance is not returned to you — expired cards represent revenue you already recognised when the customer paid.
NZ and AU merchants: don't shorten the default below 36 months. It breaks consumer-protection rules and could expose your business to liability. Stick with the default unless your country has different rules.
Reactivating an expired card
There's no "un-expire" button. If you want to extend a card as a goodwill gesture:
- Note the original card's balance and the customer's email.
- From Gift cards, click Issue gift card and create a new one with the same balance.
- Email the new code to the customer.