Gift card expiry
Gift cards either never expire or expire a set number of months after they're issued. The safe default is "Never expires" — set your store default under Settings, override it per product, and know that each card keeps the expiry it was sold with.
Gift card expiry
Every gift card you sell either never expires or expires a set number of months after it's issued. By default, new gift cards never expire — that's the simplest, most customer-friendly setting, and in many regions a multi-year minimum validity is required by law, so "never" keeps you on the safe side everywhere.
You can change this default for your whole store, or override it on individual gift card products.
Setting your store default
Open Settings → Gift cards and choose one of:
- Never expires — cards stay valid until they're fully redeemed. This is the default.
- Expire after [N] months — enter any number of months from 1 to 120 (10 years).
- Go to Settings → Gift cards.
- Pick "Never expires" or "Expire after N months". If you choose months, type the number in the box.
- Save defaults. The change applies to gift cards issued from now on — it never touches cards you've already sold.
Overriding for a single product
If most of your cards should never expire but you're running a short-term promotional card, open that gift card product in Products and set its expiry there. A product can:
- Inherit your store default (the usual choice),
- be set to never expire, or
- expire after its own number of months.
The per-product setting always wins over the store default.
Each card keeps its own expiry
When a card is issued, its expiry is stamped onto that card. So if you later change your store default or a product's setting, cards that are already out in the wild keep the expiry they were sold with.
This is on purpose. Customers see the expiry date the moment they buy, and quietly shortening it afterwards would break that promise. Changing your default only ever affects future cards.
What happens when a card expires
Once a card passes its expiry date:
- The QR code and the typed code are rejected at redemption, both in person and at online checkout. Your staff see a clear "This gift card expired on [date]" message in Redemptions.
- If a customer checks their balance at
your-store.zillo.app/balance, they see the expiry notice instead of a spendable balance. - The remaining balance is not returned to you as cash — it simply becomes unredeemable.
Extending or replacing an expired card
There's no "un-expire" switch. If you want to honour an expired card as a goodwill gesture, issue the customer a fresh one:
- Look up the old card in Gift cards and note its remaining balance and the customer's email.
- Create a manual sale for your gift card product, set the value to the old balance, and mark it as a comp so there's no charge.
- Confirm. The customer is emailed a new code and wallet pass automatically.
If you regularly extend cards, consider switching your store default to "Never expires" so the situation stops coming up.