I’ve noticed that sometimes when I issue a refund it doesn’t give me the option to refund to a gift card (which is our policy) and it automatically goes back to the persons credit card.
What is the reason for this?
Topic summary
Issue: Refunds sometimes skip the option to return value to a gift card and instead automatically go back to the customer’s credit card; the reason is requested.
Response: A reply states Shopify does not support refunding to gift cards natively (“out of the box”). As a workaround, an app (Neat Credit) can issue store credit via discount codes directly from the Order page; the poster suggests discount codes may be clearer to customers than gift cards.
Clarification: Gift card = stored-value credit issued by the store; discount code = code applied at checkout to reduce the order total.
Outcome: No concrete explanation was provided for the inconsistent availability of the gift card refund option or automatic credit card refunds. The discussion remains open, with a third‑party solution proposed but the core “why” unanswered.
Hi there, as the other commenter said, this is unfortunately not possible with Shopify out of the box.
In order to solve this problem via an even better way than gift cards, there’s also an app I created: https://apps.shopify.com/neat-credit
You can use it straight off the Order page and the discount codes make more sense to customers than gift cards.