Balance-backed Tenders
Balance-backed tenders are the payment methods that draw on a balance your store's system already keeps: a gift card, store credit, loyalty points, and on account. Each is checked against a live record at the moment of payment, so all of them need a connection and are refused offline. See Working Offline for what still works during an outage.
Gift card
When you redeem a gift card, it is checked against your back office's own record of its balance. Scan or type the card, and the app checks it before any money moves. A card that does not exist, has expired, is blocked, or is short of the amount is named there and then.
A few rules you will meet:
- One redemption per card number per sale. The same card cannot be used twice on one sale, even when its balance would cover both. The refusal fires before the balance is even fetched.
- Redeeming more than the balance is refused, and the refusal names the balance that remains.
- A gift card cannot be bought with a gift card, or with store credit. Presenting one against a sale that is issuing or topping up a card is refused, so settle that sale with card or on account, or send it to a register for cash.
Redeeming a card is always available, even at a store that no longer sells cards. The card record itself belongs to your back office, so the phone never mints or debits a card.
Store credit
Store credit is not a separate instrument. It is a gift card flagged as store credit, and it requires a card number just like any other card. The one thing store credit does is pay: it cannot be sold, topped up, or paid out, and each of those is refused by name.
Loyalty points
Loyalty redemption is amount-first. You enter an amount of money, and the app works out the points from the loyalty engine's own figure, so the points you see are the points burned.
What will stop you, and why:
- Redemption is capped at both what the sale still needs and the tier's own ceiling. Whichever is smaller wins.
- A tier ceiling of zero means forbidden right now, not unlimited. The tier and its point balance can still show while the redeem action refuses.
- An amount too small to buy a whole point is refused. Redeem more, or skip loyalty.
- Loyalty shows as unavailable rather than showing stale points when its read is broken or the loyalty system is absent. The sale continues on another method.
Loyalty depends on a separate application. Without it, the loyalty leg refuses by name and the sale carries on.
On account
On account has two uses, and both need the account-payment permission.
Settling a sale on account
A trade customer's sale books to their account instead of taking money now. A walk-in is refused, because there is no account to book against. A customer who is frozen, disabled, or on another currency is refused before anything composes.
Where a market requires it, a business-to-business sale can ask for the buyer's tax registration before it submits.
Collecting a payment against an account
You can also take money against a customer's outstanding balance. Your store's system works out the allocation, oldest invoice first, and you see the split before you authorize it.
- Money over the outstanding total becomes one advance on the customer's account, rather than being refused or lost.
- A disputed invoice can be excluded, and the money re-flows across the rest.
- If the split changed since you saw it, because another till collected against the same account first, the app names it and asks you to review the new split and re-authorize.
- On account cannot pay an account payment. Money cannot be put onto an account by the account itself.
On a store that records cards on its bank's terminal, a collection accepts a card only and typed card details are not permitted, so the money is taken at a register. See the card boundary in Cash and Card.