Gift Card Out of stock rejection at checkout

Technical Q&A
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Topic summary

Gift cards are being incorrectly rejected at checkout with an “Out of Stock” error message, despite not having inventory tracking enabled.

Troubleshooting attempts (unsuccessful):

  • Reviewing theme and cart liquid files for checkout routines
  • Checking product settings and gift card configurations
  • Creating new gift cards with default settings (same issue persists)
  • Reviewing checkout settings for potential toggles

Identified cause:
The issue appears when variants are manually added to gift card products through the “Products” section instead of using the proper “Gift Cards > Add a Gift Card” workflow.

Working solution:

  • Rename the problematic gift card product to “- OLD” and set status to “Draft” (preserves functionality for customers who previously purchased)
  • Create a new gift card product through the correct workflow with all desired denominations
  • The newly created product no longer triggers the out-of-stock error at checkout

Note: Shopify documentation doesn’t provide a clear method to update existing gift card products with additional variants, making recreation the most reliable fix.

Summarized with AI on November 14. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
2

Hey, I just went through the same issue. I think it is because I manually added a Variant to the “Gift Card” product via “Products”, rather than going through the “Gift Card> Add a Gift Card” method. After I did this, my gift card product started showing the out of stock.

I looked through shopify docs but was unable to find a way to actually update an existing product to add more variants:

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/gift-card-products/add-update-gift-card-products

While it says “update” is an option, I was unable to do so.

To resolve the issue on my end, I recreated the gift card product with all the “Denominations” I previously had, plus the additions I was looking to make in the first place. I tested this out and it no longer has the Out Of Stock issue at checkout.

I then moved the old one to “Draft” status and renamed it with an “- OLD” at the end of the name. Not sure if this is necessary but instead of deleting the product entirely, I wanted to ensure that the customers who bought these would still be able to use it.