Tag Archive for: gift cards

Apple Pay, Gift Cards, and more

If you’ve been in the shop recently, you may have noticed a familiar white swivel stand at our cash register. That’s right, we’ve (finally) switched to Square as our POS provider.

Of course, even if you noticed, there’s a good chance you didn’t care, and that’s fine! But there are a few small ways in which this may affect our customers.

Contactless payment

We tried for a while to set this up with our old payment processor, and this is where I should insert some kind of gif of something jumping through a lot of hoops. But switching to Square made it easy for us to accept NFC-based contactless payment methods, including Apple Pay and Google Pay. It’s even built into some cards—look for the little contactless icon on the back. So if you have a contactless payment method, just tap away when you see the green light on our Square reader.

Physical Gift Cards

Since opening our shop in 2013, we’ve sold magnetic-stripe gift cards that you can load up in any amount. Fortunately, we had a record of all outstanding card balances. So when we switched to Square, we were able to transfer all that info into our account.

If you show up with an older card (from before July 15, 2019),  you’ll still be able to use it (thought we’ll have to type in the number instead of swiping). The only issue with old cards is checking your balance online using the URL on the back of the card. That’s our old processor’s site. Since they’re unaware of Square transactions, that site will record an inaccurate balance if your card has been used since we switched.

We’ve gotten a new batch of integrated cards from Square, so we’re still selling gift cards going forward! You can always find out the balance of an old or new card by bringing it in to our shop.

eGift Cards

Our Square account also allows you to purchase digital gift cards (the link takes you to our order page on Square’s site). eGift Cards are delivered via email—either immediately or at a later date of your choosing. This is a great option if you’re out of town and have a friend or relative in the Triangle who’s a fan of our ice cream.

Please note that because we can deliver digital gift cards, we don’t sell physical cards online or send them in the mail! Also, these digital cards can only be redeemed in person at our shop. This means they can’t be used for Special Orders (of ice cream cakes or gallon tubs), because we currently only accept special orders online. We may look into changing that in the future, but for now if you had a gift card that you hoped to redeem for a special order, we apologize for any inconvenience!