Gift Card Migration Guide
Overview
When transitioning from another gift card program provider/system, we have two main goals:
A frictionless experience for you, and your guests
Accurate processing of all gift card transaction
Before You Start
If you will also be migrating loyalty data, it should be scheduled for a different day than the gift card migration. We recommend at least 24 hours between migrations.
You will need to get historical data from your current provider. There will likely be a cost associated with acquiring this data.
You will need to allow time for current providers to process your request for data; it can sometimes take them a while to deliver it to you. For this reason, we recommend requesting the data as early in the migration process as possible.
We migrate card/account numbers, activation location, activation date, and current balance. We do not migrate a complete transaction history. If you will need to reference complete transaction data for transactions prior to the migration, you will need to acquire this data from your previous provider and make it available to your internal teams for reference.
We may not be able to migrate all inactive cards. This will largely depend on whether you can provide a full list of all card numbers that have ever been printed.
Once you've started the migration process, do not purchase and new cards to add to inventory.
Consider all channels in which your cards are sold, not just your own locations (e.g. convenience stores, big box stores, InComm, Blackhawk, etc.)
Don't forget virtual inventory! When someone buys a gift card online, a card number is assigned at the time of purchase. After migration, Paytronix will do the assignment of these card numbers; we'll need a bank of card numbers that we can use to assign to online gift card purchases. You'll need to purchase new virtual card numbers that can be assigned for future online guest card purchases.
If you will have more than 1,000,000 accounts/cards to migrate, allow extra time for review and migration.
The maximum card digit length is 38.
Migrations usually involve sending/receiving large amounts of data that contains guest PII. For this reason we require you use a secured method of file transfer when sending us data that contains PII.
We have multiple check steps to preserve and improve the accuracy and completeness of your guest account data, however, you are responsible for final data validation. Make sure to budget time to review, and correct gaps/errors in the data. You don't want to be in the position of having to rush through this important step.
Test Migration
The first step is to test the migration. To do this, we will need the following from you:
10 sequential physical cards, per card printer, per card template
Per card printer? Usually you can identify different printers by different card artwork, or the language on the back of the card.
Sequential? The actual human-readable card number may not be "sequential" as there may be random digits/check digits appended to the card number. But all batches of cards have a sequence to them. We need 10 cards of each batch in sequence.
Card template? If you issue different types of gift cards, we will need 10 per each.
Usually, this means 10 cards per card provider, but if a card provider has used different printers over time, and older cards are still in circulation, we will need those cards.
Confirm mailing address with the Paytronix contact working on your project. We have a few offices; mailing your cards to the correct location helps keep the project moving.
We need to know the full range of card numbers that exist. We need the first and last numbers for all cards that you've ever had printed. For example:
BATCH1 (25,000 cards) - TYPE = gift
first # = 6000104000000
last# = 6000104024999
BATCH2 (15,000 cards) - TYPE = gift
first # = 7992289000000
last # = 7992289014999
Data file that includes:
Full track data -- Track I and Track II
Registration codes, or PIN data, if available. If you do not have this data, we will ask you for written acknowledgement that you have been advised of the risks, and are assuming liability for cards migrated without this information.
We will also need a data file containing all active cards with a balance greater than $0.00 (output needs to be in TSV or CSV format). The data file will need to contain these data fields:
Card/Account Number
Activation Date
Activation Store/Location
Current Balance(s)
Any other information you want to migrate
We will need to know a bit about how you handle gift cards currently, and how you will want to handle them going forward
How do you handle money movement on gift card transactions? Centralized? Decentralized? See: Money Movement Fundamentals.
How will you handle the fees associated with third-party sales of gift cards?
Your Paytronix contact will thoroughly review financial considerations of your gift card program; you should be prepared to discuss how your organization handles gift card transactions in a multi-location business.
Verification of printed information on the back of your cards:
Do you want to make changes to the text or images that appear on the back of your cards? We will need your updated preferences.
Do your cards have a 1-800 printed on them that guests can call to get account info? Do you own that number? If not, you may need to acquire it so it can be re-pointed in our system.
If you own, or can acquire the phone number, we can re-point and there will be no discernible change to guests. The number will work, and they'll get accurate balance info when they call.
If you do not own, or cannot acquire the existing phone number, you will need to use a different phone number.
If you continue to try to use the same phone number, it may not work.
When guests call in, they will get outdated info.
Their balances and other info will not be correct if they have visited since the migration.
You'll need to communicate to guests, and Operations that you are switching gift card providers. We recommend the following:
Train Operations - the phone number on the gift cards is changing, and they should be communicating the change to guests
Post the change on your website about the new phone number
Post a notice near the host stand, or registers about the new phone number
Let your customer service reps know that they may be receiving calls/complaints on this topic. Make sure they have the new phone number available to provide to guests.
Before sending your data, you'll need to review it for accuracy, completeness, and format:
You are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the data. All data must also adhere to migration data validation parameters. For example, all states must be in 2-letter abbreviation form, all ZIP codes must match the state listed. Your Paytronix contact will review the full checklist with you before you gather the data.
Your Paytronix contact can provide a template for you to use in sending us your data; this is the best way to ensure your data adheres to the data validation parameters.
If you have incomplete records, Your Paytronix contact will review options with you.
All data must be sent via a secured method of file transfer.
Once we have all the data, we can begin the test migration:
We will review your data, and let you know if you need to send a new file with corrected data.
Once we have complete, accurate data, we will bring in all active and inactive gift cards so they will continue to work at the POS with appropriate financial rules (%discount, attribution to stores, money movement, etc.).
We will test the migration; identify any potential issues with the migration.
We will provide a report of all outstanding liability to be reviewed by your Finance Team.
Then, we'll need to you to approve the data to be migrated:
We will provide a summary report of all card balances
You'll need to check the summary report against your records.
This is the last chance for you to make any changes to data.
After thorough review, you'll give the final approval; you assume responsibility for all data inaccuracies.
Go Live Migration
During this process, your business keeps moving! After a successful test, you'll need to send us an updated data file that includes the additional activity between the test migration and the go-live time/date, so we can add it to the data to be migrated. There are few ways you can provide us the updated data for the period between the end of testing and the go-live time/date. Your Paytronix contact will help you select the best option based on: your organization's logistics, the amount of time between the completion of the test and the go-live time/date, the volume of guests and transactions. etc.
While we are migrating your data, your ability to process gift card transactions will be offline. For this reason, your Paytronix contact will carefully schedule the migration window with you based on your organization's business hours, to minimize downtime.
While we are migrating your data, you will need to "re-route" gift card sales/activations at third-party resellers. Your Paytronix contact will help you with a plan to handle sales of gift cards not at your locations that happen during the migration window.
A typical scenario is that you'll need to wait until all your locations close to run the final reports. As soon as you have this last batch of data, you'll need to clean and verify it, and send it to us. We will then do the migration during off hours, while your locations are closed; when locations re-open they'll be ready to run gift card transactions via Paytronix.
Post Migration
After your data has been migrated, all card information will be with Paytronix; all gift card transactions will be processed by Paytronix.
It's important that you keep a close eye on transactions for the first ~48 hours. Report any issues immediately to your Paytronix contact.
Migrated cards will keep their original activation date and activation location when migrated. Any escheatment rules that are based on card sale date will be unaffected. The date of last load (adding value to a gift card), or last transaction will be the date of the migration. Any escheatment or dormancy rules that are based on these dates are effectively reset. Check with your Legal Team for guidance relating to gift card escheatment.
For further assistance, please contact your solutions consultant or customer success manager, or email [email protected].