Gift Cards
When a guest buys a gift card from a registry on your online store, Listify sends the card to the registrant, not to the guest. Shopify then emails two people:
- The registrant gets Shopify's New gift card email, with the code they spend.
- The guest who paid gets Shopify's Gift card receipt, which confirms who the card went to.
Shopify's default Gift card receipt also prints the full gift card code. So out of the box, the guest can see and spend the card they gave away. Shopify has no setting to stop that email, and no app can edit notifications for you. The fix is a one-time edit to that template, which takes about five minutes.
This page covers gift cards bought on your online store.
Why this edit is safe
Shopify only sends the Gift card receipt when a gift card is sent to someone else. A customer who buys a gift card for themselves gets the New gift card email instead, so their code is untouched.
It also applies to gift cards your customers send to a friend outside a registry. After the edit, their receipt confirms the card was sent, without the code. That is usually what you want anyway.
Step by step
- In your Shopify admin, go to Settings → Notifications → Customer notifications.
- Under Gift cards, open Gift card receipt. Do not open New gift card (see below).
- Click Edit code.
- Remove every place the template outputs one of the three values in the table below. Remove the whole element around it, not just the value: for example the complete button that links to the gift card page, or the complete block that shows the Apple Wallet button. A leftover empty button looks broken.
- Click Save.
| Remove anything that outputs | Why |
|---|---|
gift_card.code | The code itself, shown under "Use the gift card code online". In the default template it is gift_card.code followed by the format_code filter. Remove the whole row around it. |
gift_card.url | The "View gift card balance" link, which opens the gift card page with the full code. Remove the whole link. |
gift_card.pass_url | The "Add to Apple Wallet" button, which carries the code. Remove the whole {% if gift_card.pass_url %} block. |
Removing only the code text is not enough: the gift card page link and the wallet pass both still give the guest the full code.
These are the three places Shopify's default Gift card receipt shows the code (checked September 2026). If your template was edited before, or Shopify changes the default later, search the code editor for gift_card. and remove anything else that prints the code or links to the gift card.
These are safe to keep, so the receipt still reads as a proper confirmation: gift_card.recipient (the registrant's name and email), gift_card.message, gift_card.send_on, gift_card.initial_value and gift_card.last_four_characters.
What not to touch
Leave the New gift card template alone. That is the email that delivers the code to the registrant. If you remove the code from it, the registrant receives a gift card they cannot spend.
Testing your change
- On the Gift card receipt template, use Send test to email the preview to yourself.
- Check the test email: no code, no "View gift card balance" link, no Apple Wallet button. The recipient and amount should still be there.
The test email uses Shopify's sample data, not a real order. For a full check, buy a small gift card from a test registry and confirm that the registrant's email has the code and yours does not.
If your store uses more than one language
Shopify keeps a translation of this notification for each of your store languages, managed in the notification editor. After the edit, open the Gift card receipt in each language and check whether the code still appears there. Repeat the edit wherever it does, and use Send test for each language.
Good to know
- Undoing the edit: the template has a Revert to default option, which restores Shopify's original, code included.
- Shopify updates: once you edit a notification, it no longer receives Shopify's updates to the default template. Check it again if Shopify announces changes to gift card emails.
- Emails already sent before the edit still contain the code.
- Other routes to the code are not covered by this template. Refunding an order to a new gift card emails the original buyer, and resending a gift card from your admin may reach the buyer too.
If something still looks wrong, reach out via support with the order number and we will take a look.