6. Gift Card Not Received by Recipient

Diagnose and fix the most common reasons a Giftnote gift card never reached the recipient, from product setup and Auto Fulfill to Klaviyo events.

Written By Giftnote Team

Last updated About 1 hour ago

A customer bought a gift card for someone and the recipient never got it — we know how stressful that is, especially during gifting season. This is almost always caused by one of six things, and most of them you can diagnose and fix yourself in under five minutes.

A gift card in Giftnote. The Notifications panel shows each email and whether it was sent.

Most common causes

  1. Gift card product is misconfigured — the product isn't set up as a gift card product in Giftnote, or its inventory or shipping settings aren't set correctly, which silently prevents delivery.
  2. Gift card went to the purchaser, not the recipient — the customer added the gift card to their cart from the product page without filling in recipient details.
  3. The order is waiting to be fulfilled — Auto Fulfill is turned off, so the gift card order sits unfulfilled and the code isn't sent.
  4. Klaviyo flows are disconnected — especially common after reinstalling the Giftnote app, which can break the link to your Klaviyo flows.
  5. Recipient email address is invalid — a typo or hidden whitespace character in the email field causes silent delivery failure.
  6. Native emails and Klaviyo are both off — Giftnote's built-in emails were disabled for Klaviyo, but Klaviyo flows were never activated (or were deactivated).

Check your gift card product configuration

This is the single most common reason gift cards fail to deliver. Giftnote uses the gift card products configured in the app — if the product isn't configured, or its Shopify settings are wrong, the gift card code may never reach the recipient.

Start in Giftnote. Open Settings → Gift Cards → Products. Each gift card product is listed with its vendor and a status. Inactive products will not process new gift cards correctly, and a banner counts any products with configuration issues. Select Refresh after fixing a product, and check Detected products for gift card products that haven't been added yet.

Then fix the product in Shopify:

  1. Open your Shopify admin and go to Products. Find the product you're using as your Giftnote gift card (Open in Shopify on the Products page takes you there).
  2. Confirm it's the product Giftnote is configured to use. The product should be listed on Settings → Gift Cards → Products in the Giftnote app. You don't need to set a particular Vendor value.
  3. Confirm the product is not set as a physical product. In the Shipping section, make sure This is a physical product is unchecked. If it's checked, customers will be charged shipping for a digital gift card. If you don't see a Shipping section, check each individual variant — shipping settings can be set at the variant level.
  4. Confirm inventory tracking is turned off. In the Inventory section (or on each variant), make sure Track quantity is unchecked. Enabling inventory tracking on a gift card product causes gift card codes to become invalid.
  5. Check the product template. At the bottom of the product page in the Online store section, check the Theme template. If your theme has a gift-card template, the product should use it. If you're unsure, chat with us and we'll help.
  6. Confirm the product was created from scratch. Giftnote gift card products must be created as a brand new Shopify product — not converted from an existing product or duplicated from a native Shopify gift card. If you're unsure how this product was originally created and nothing else is fixing the issue, you may need to create a new one.
  7. Check that only one Giftnote gift card product is live. If you have multiple gift card products published in your store, archive all but one. Having multiple live Giftnote gift card products can cause routing issues.

How you'll know it's fixed: The product shows Active on Settings → Gift Cards → Products. Then place a test gift card order from your live storefront (not from the Shopify admin). The recipient should receive the gift card email within a few minutes.

Check whether the gift card went to the purchaser instead of the recipient

This happens when a customer adds the gift card product to their cart directly from the product page — without filling in a recipient name, email or gift message through the Giftnote gift card widget. Without recipient details, Giftnote has nowhere to send the gift card, so Shopify's default behaviour kicks in and the code goes to the buyer.

  1. Open the Giftnote app and select Gift Cards. Search for the order number, or find the order in the list.
  2. Check the RECIPIENT column. If there's no Giftnote gift card for that order, or no recipient on it, the customer bypassed the gift flow and the code was sent to the purchaser's email instead.

You can also open the order in Shopify and look for Giftnote details on the order. Giftnote keeps gift details in its own order metafield, so it doesn't need order attributes to work. Fields like giftnote_to, giftnote_email and giftnote_message only appear under Additional details if Keep Order Attributes is turned on in Settings → Gift Orders → Advanced. It's off by default, and shops that had it turned on keep it. It's there for themes, packing slips, Shopify Flow, Order Printer and 3PLs that read note attributes.

To fix this for the affected customer: Contact Giftnote support with the order number. We can manually re-issue the gift card and send it directly to the intended recipient.

To prevent this going forward: Make sure the Giftnote Gift Card Message app block is placed on your gift card product page — not the checkout widget. The checkout widget does not work for gift card purchases. Only the product page widget triggers the correct gift card flow. Settings → Overview → Storefront widgets shows whether the block is added to your published theme.

Also consider removing the standard Add to Cart button from your gift card product page template so customers must go through the Giftnote widget to purchase.

Check that the gift card order has been fulfilled

Giftnote marks gift card orders fulfilled automatically once they finish processing, and the code is then ready to send. If Auto Fulfill has been turned off (for example, for manual fraud review), gift card orders sit unfulfilled until someone fulfills them by hand, and the recipient waits.

  1. Go to Settings → Gift Cards → Advanced and check Automatically fulfill gift card orders.
  2. If it's off on purpose, fulfil the waiting gift card orders in Shopify after your review.
  3. If it's off by mistake, turn it back on.

Check whether your Klaviyo flows are active

If you're using Klaviyo to deliver gift card emails, the Klaviyo connection and flows must be active. Reinstalling the Giftnote app can disconnect legacy Klaviyo flows without warning.

  1. In Giftnote, open Settings → Integrations → Klaviyo. Check it shows Connected and Integration Enabled, and that the Received Gift Card event is switched on. Select Test on that event to send a test event to Klaviyo.
  2. Log in to your Klaviyo account and go to Flows. Look for the flow triggered by Received Gift Card — the gift card email to the recipient. Purchased Gift Card and Gift Card Delivered go to the customer who bought it, and Gift Card covers gift cards bought with no message. Event names can be renamed on the integration page, so check yours.
  3. Check that each flow's status is Live. If a flow shows as Draft or Manual, it is not sending automatically. If your flows show as Draft after a recent app reinstall, check that each one is triggered by an event name shown on the Klaviyo integration page, then set it live. New flows should use those event names. Chat with us if you need help. On a paid plan (Core or Professional), you can ask us to copy the current template flows into your Klaviyo account: chat with us or email support@giftnote.com.
  4. Verify that Giftnote's native emails are off. If both Klaviyo flows and Giftnote's native emails are active, recipients can receive duplicate emails. If both are off, recipients receive nothing. Settings → Notifications lists every notification. Open one to see its Channels: Email and SMS each have an on/off switch and Edit template, and connected integrations such as Klaviyo show their own switch. Native gift card notifications are under Gift Cards. Turn the Email switch off on each one your Klaviyo flows now send.

How you'll know it's fixed: Your Klaviyo flows will show as Live, and the flow analytics will show new events being received after the next gift card purchase (or after you select Test).

Check the recipient's email address

A typo or hidden whitespace character in the recipient email field will cause delivery to fail silently — the gift card can show as sent in the Giftnote app, but the email never arrives.

  1. Open the gift card in the Giftnote app (Gift Cards → select the card) and check the email on the Gift Message card.
  2. Look for obvious issues. Common problems: misspelled domain (gmial.com instead of gmail.com), extra space before or after the email, missing characters. A whitespace trim fix was deployed, but custom form integrations or older widget versions may still pass through leading or trailing spaces.
  3. Ask the purchaser to confirm the intended email address. If the email on file doesn't match what the purchaser intended, select Edit on the Gift Message card to correct it. Saving the correction doesn't send the gift card again. Check the gift card's Timeline to see what has been sent, then chat with us with the correct email and we can re-issue the gift card to the right address.
  4. Don't press Force on a gift card. It can send the recipient a duplicate. If you resend, wait for the page to finish loading first.

Check for a delivery gap between native emails and Klaviyo

This happens when Giftnote's built-in email notifications were turned off in preparation for Klaviyo — but the Klaviyo flows were never activated, or the Klaviyo transactional approval is still pending.

  1. In the Giftnote app, go to Settings → Notifications. Open each gift card notification and check whether its Email switch is on or off under Channels.
  2. If native emails are off, verify Klaviyo flows are Live. Follow the steps in the Klaviyo section above. If your Klaviyo flows are still in Draft or waiting for transactional approval, either activate them or temporarily re-enable Giftnote's native emails so gift cards are delivered while you wait.

Klaviyo transactional approval typically takes up to 24 hours. If you're about to go live or are in a peak gifting period, enable native emails as a safety net until approval comes through.

Still not working?

  • Check your Shopify billing spend cap. If your store has hit its monthly app billing limit, Giftnote may have stopped processing. Your current limit shows on Settings → Subscription in the Giftnote app. To raise it, go to Shopify Admin → Settings → Billing → View all subscriptions → Giftnote → View spending limit and increase the cap. See Increase Your Shopify Billing Spend Cap.
  • Check whether the gift card product uses a native Shopify gift card type. Giftnote gift cards must be standard Shopify products — not Shopify's built-in gift card product type. On Settings → Gift Cards → Products these show as Shopify gift card — not supported. If the product was created using Shopify's native Gift card option, it's incompatible with Giftnote and needs to be recreated from scratch as a regular product.
  • Check the HEALTH column on the Gift Cards list. Open any card with warnings to see what's wrong.
  • Ask the recipient to check their spam/junk folder. Gift card delivery emails can occasionally be filtered, especially if the recipient's email provider is unfamiliar with your sending domain.
  • Chat with us using the chat button in the help centre or in the app — include your store URL, the Shopify order number for the affected gift card, and the recipient email address so we can investigate and re-issue immediately.