Athenian Gift Cards
product details.
Athenian Gift Cards adds gift card products, automated issuance, balance tracking, branded email delivery, and cart or checkout redemption to WooCommerce. It helps teams manage stored value from purchase through redemption while keeping balances tied to orders, customers, and platform credit patterns while keeping data, permissions, and automation aligned with the broader Athenian Platform Ecosystem.
Athenian Gift Cards is a WooCommerce-native stored-value plugin for selling, issuing, delivering, managing, and redeeming gift cards directly inside WordPress. It turns standard WooCommerce products into gift card products, captures recipient details during purchase, automatically issues unique gift card codes when orders are paid, tracks balances through private ath_giftcard records, and lets customers redeem one or more gift cards in the cart or checkout.
Unlike a coupon, a gift card represents prepaid value that may be partially redeemed, carried forward, tracked over time, associated with a recipient, and connected back to issuing and redeeming orders. Athenian Gift Cards handles that full lifecycle: product setup, recipient capture, code generation, branded email delivery, balance management, checkout redemption, order-level tender metadata, and ledger-style issuance/redemption hooks.
For customers, the workflow is straightforward: purchase a gift card, send it to a recipient, and redeem the code during checkout. For merchants, the plugin preserves the operational data that matters, including initial value, current balance, currency, status, expiration, recipient name/email, message, purchaser, issuing order, redemption history, and shared Athenian stored-value tender lines.
Within the Athenian Platform, Athenian Gift Cards acts as a stored-value participant alongside Store Credits & Rewards and future account-credit, loyalty, POS, reporting, and accounting modules.
How Athenian Gift Cards fits the Athenian Platform
Platform role: Athenian Gift Cards is a focused capability in the Cart, Checkout & Customer Service and Payments, Credits & Payouts layer. Its primary scope covers Checkout & Assisted Ordering and Store Credit, Gift Cards & Rewards while remaining composable with the other modules an implementation actually requires.
Connected scope: Athenian Gift Cards is designed to work inside a WordPress and WooCommerce operating environment where storefront, customer, order, identity, payment, fulfillment, automation, and reporting context can remain connected across relevant modules instead of being trapped in isolated add-ons.
From module to operating platform: Athenian Brands organizes the ecosystem in four connected layers: Platform Kernel and Platform Core foundations; focused capability plugins; implementation and integration services; and operating brands such as PrintGhost.ai, Athenian Marketplace, Athenian Academy, and Athenian Unÿa that apply the same patterns to real business workflows.
Gift Card Commerce
Turn WooCommerce Products Into Sellable Digital Gift Cards
Athenian Gift Cards lets merchants mark simple or variable WooCommerce
products as gift card products, capture recipient details during purchase,
and automatically issue unique stored-value codes after payment.
| Gift Card Layer | Operational Value |
|---|---|
| Product Flag | Enable gift card behavior on WooCommerce products using the product-level _ath_is_giftcard setting. |
| Recipient Capture | Collect recipient name, recipient email, and personalized gift message from the product page purchase flow. |
| Automatic Issuance | Issue one unique gift card code per purchased quantity when an eligible order reaches processing or completed status. |
| Order Connection | Link issued cards back to the purchaser, recipient, order item, issuing order, currency, and original paid value. |
- Registers issued gift cards as private
ath_giftcardrecords. - Generates human-friendly codes in the format
GC-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. - Stores readable codes separately from SHA-256 lookup hashes in
_ath_gc_code_hash. - Prevents duplicate issuance with the order flag
_ath_gc_issued.
Stored-Value Redemption
Let Customers Redeem One or More Gift Cards in Cart and Checkout
The plugin validates gift card codes, stores active codes in the WooCommerce
session, applies available value as negative non-taxable fees, and debits
balances only after the resulting order reaches a paid or fulfilled status.
Apply multiple gift card codes during cart or checkout
Allow partial redemption or require full remaining-order coverage
Debit balances after order confirmation, not during abandoned carts
| Redemption Layer | How It Helps |
|---|---|
| Code Validation | Normalizes codes, looks up gift cards by secure hash, checks active status, expiration, and positive balance. |
| Cart Fees | Applies usable gift card value during woocommerce_cart_calculate_fees as negative non-taxable fees. |
| Order Capture | Saves applied codes and amounts to the order, then debits card balances on processing or completed status. |
| Shared Tender Data | Merges gift card usage into _ath_stored_value_tenders as platform-readable gift_card tender lines. |
- Stores applied codes in order meta with
_ath_gc_codes. - Stores applied amounts in
_ath_gc_appliedand total redeemed value in_ath_gc_redeemed_total. - Prevents duplicate redemption capture with
_ath_gc_redeemed. - Includes a balance lookup shortcode named
'ath_giftcard_balance'for controlled support or account-page contexts.
Gift Card Operations
Manage Gift Card Balances, Branded Emails, and Stored-Value Workflows
Athenian Gift Cards includes WooCommerce admin screens for settings,
designer controls, issued card management, balance/status editing,
branded email delivery, APC styling alignment, and future reporting hooks.
| Operations Layer | Operational Purpose |
|---|---|
| Gift Card Admin | Review and edit issued cards, balances, status, expiration, recipient data, message, and issuing order references. |
| Designer Settings | Configure template ID, logo URL, accent color, email background, card background, custom CSS, sender name, and sender email. |
| Email Delivery | Send branded HTML gift card emails using the design manager, renderer interfaces, and WooCommerce email wrappers when available. |
| Platform Hooks | Emit ath_stored_value_ledger_entry events for issuance and redemption capture so future reporting or accounting modules can listen. |
Gift cards as real stored value:
Athenian Gift Cards keeps issuance, delivery, balance, redemption, order
tender data, and future ledger hooks connected inside WooCommerce instead
of treating prepaid value like a one-time discount code.
- Stores design configuration in
ath_gc_design. - Supports global settings for default expiration days and partial redemption behavior.
- Declares WooCommerce HPOS compatibility and uses WooCommerce CRUD/meta APIs for order handling.
- Builds toward email previews, media-picker logos, customer balance forms, refund-aware re-crediting, POS redemption, WPGraphQL fields, and unified stored-value reporting.