# How Corporate Gifting Works on Shopify, Step by Step Source: https://www.seedinfluencers.com/blog/how-corporate-gifting-works-on-shopify Published: 2026-09-24 A screen-by-screen walkthrough of corporate gifting on Shopify: buyer company, merchant, printed codes, redemption, and the $0 draft order that lands in your admin. Corporate gifting is influencer gifting with the employee list replacing the creator list and a printed card replacing a DM. A company pays a merchant for a batch of gifts at a fixed price per head, the merchant hands out one code per recipient, and each code turns into exactly one real, $0 order the moment someone redeems it. Nobody on the receiving end sees a price, and nobody can reuse a code once it's spent. This post walks through the mechanics screen by screen: how the buyer relationship is set up, how the codes get to recipients, what redemption looks like, and what shows up in the merchant's Shopify admin at the end. ## The five parts of the flow Every corporate gifting run has the same five parts, in this order: the merchant sets up the buyer, the merchant curates a gift selection and mints codes, the codes reach recipients (printed or emailed), a recipient redeems a code and picks a gift, and a $0 draft order lands in the merchant's admin for fulfilment. Nothing about the buyer's side of the transaction — how they paid the merchant — runs through this system. That happens however the merchant and buyer already do business: invoice, wire, a checkout link, whatever's normal for a B2B deal that size. ## Step 1 — the merchant sets up the buyer as an organisation Before any codes exist, the merchant creates a record for the buyer — a company, a church, an agency, whoever is paying for the batch. This isn't a Shopify customer record; it's a container that groups everything this one buyer is entitled to: how many gifts they bought, at what tier, and which codes belong to them. If the same company comes back next quarter for another round, the merchant reuses the same buyer record rather than starting from scratch. This step exists because a merchant running corporate gifting for more than one buyer at a time needs to answer "how many of Buyer A's codes are still unused?" without digging through a spreadsheet. Grouping by buyer from the start is what makes that answer a lookup instead of a manual count. ## Step 2 — the merchant curates a gift tier and mints codes Inside a buyer's record, the merchant creates one or more gift tiers — a named set of products the recipient will be allowed to choose from. A tier can be built three ways: - **A price band** — the merchant sets a minimum and maximum price, and every product with a variant in that range gets pre-selected for review. Useful when a buyer has bought at a specific per-head value ("everyone gets something in the $30–$50 range") and the merchant wants the system to do the first pass. - **A hand-picked list** — the merchant selects products directly, no price filter involved. Useful for a small, deliberate assortment rather than "everything under $50." - **A live Shopify collection** — the tier points at an existing collection, and whatever's in that collection is what recipients see. Add or remove a product from the collection in Shopify later, and the gift tier updates automatically without the merchant touching the gifting setup again. Once the tier's assortment is set, the merchant mints codes: one per recipient, in the quantity the buyer paid for. Each code is an eight-character string in a format designed to survive being handwritten and read back off a printed card — letters and digits chosen specifically to avoid the pairs people misread (no zero/O, no one/I/L), grouped as two blocks of four (something like` KRMH-7P2X`) so it reads and re-types cleanly. Every code is single-use and tied to exactly one tier, so a code from the $30 tier can never be redeemed against the $80 tier's assortment. A tier also gets a couple of tester codes that don't count against the buyer's issued/redeemed totals. Running one through end to end — pick a gift, enter a test address, confirm the order lands — before a single card goes out the door is the cheapest way to catch a wrong price band or a missing product before it's a problem on 200 printed cards. ## Step 3 — codes reach recipients The merchant exports the tier's codes to a CSV and hands them to the buyer, who distributes them however fits — printed on physical cards for an office or event, emailed one at a time, dropped into an HR onboarding packet, whatever the buyer's workflow already is. The merchant doesn't manage distribution; that's the buyer's job once the codes exist. What the merchant controls is making sure the CSV export is scoped to one tier at a time, because a card is universal — the code on it is the only thing separating a $30 gift from an $80 one, so mixing codes from two tiers into one export is how the wrong gift level ends up on the wrong card. Every code points at the same one permanent redemption address, regardless of which buyer or tier it came from. That's deliberate: the card only has to say "enter this code at [URL]," not "enter this code at this specific campaign's URL." The code itself carries all the information about which tier it belongs to. ## Step 4 — a recipient redeems their code The redemption page is plain: one input for the code, formatted as the recipient types it (dashes and casing handled automatically so a typo in capitalization doesn't fail a valid code), and a submit button. Type a wrong code, a used code, or a code from a different buyer, and the message is deliberately the same — "we don't recognise that code" — so the page can't be used to probe which codes exist or figure out whose codes are whose. A valid code hands the recipient to the actual gift-picking form: a grid of the tier's curated products, with variant options (size, color, whatever applies) once one is selected. No price appears anywhere on this screen or any screen after it. The recipient picks one item, enters their shipping name and address, and submits. That's the whole recipient-facing experience — no account creation, no app to install, no confirmation step beyond the address form itself. The redemption page can live on the merchant's own domain rather than a third-party one. A merchant can create a page on their own store (something like` brand.com/pages/redeem-your-gift`) that embeds the code-entry form, so what's printed on the card matches the merchant's own site rather than pointing somewhere unfamiliar. A buyer can also get its own dedicated link scoped to just its own codes, separate from every other buyer's, if the merchant wants that separation on the URL itself rather than just in the backend records. ## Step 5 — the merchant sees a real, $0 order Submitting the address form creates an ordinary Shopify draft order — same object type the merchant already fulfils every day — priced at $0 with shipping zeroed too. It shows up in the merchant's Shopify admin like any other order: product, variant, quantity, and the recipient's address, ready to fulfil the same way the merchant fulfils a paid order. The code that produced it is marked used and can never be redeemed again. Nothing about fulfilment changes because the order came from a corporate gift rather than a paid sale — it pulls from the same inventory, gets packed the same way, and ships through the same carrier setup. The only difference upstream is how the order got created: through a code instead of a checkout. ## What the merchant can see afterward For each buyer and each tier, the merchant can see how many codes were issued, how many have been redeemed, and how many are still out. That last number matters more than it sounds — a buyer's HR team asking "how many of our 40 gifts have people actually claimed?" three weeks into a rollout is a normal, expected question, and having a real answer without opening a spreadsheet is most of what makes running more than one buyer at once manageable. ## Getting corporate gifting turned on On Seed, corporate gifting is turned on per store on request rather than being a toggle sitting in every dashboard. If a company has approached you about buying gifts in bulk — an office gift program, a client-appreciation budget, an agency buying for its own client list — [install Seed](https://apps.shopify.com/influencer-form) and message us through the support chat to get it enabled for your store. We'll walk through the tier setup with you rather than leaving you to guess at price bands and product curation cold. If you're earlier in the process — trying to figure out whether corporate gifting is worth pursuing for your store at all, or how to price it — see [why Shopify brands should sell corporate gifts](https://www.seedinfluencers.com/blog/why-shopify-brands-should-sell-corporate-gifts) for the revenue case, or [how to start selling corporate gifts from your store](https://www.seedinfluencers.com/blog/how-to-start-selling-corporate-gifts-shopify) for the practical playbook on pricing, curation, and finding your first buyer. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is corporate gifting on Shopify? A company buys a batch of gifts from a Shopify merchant at an agreed price per head. The merchant issues one single-use code per recipient. Each recipient enters their code on a permanent redemption page, picks one item from a curated selection with no prices shown, types their address, and a real $0 draft order lands in the merchant's Shopify admin. ### Do recipients see prices when redeeming a corporate gift code? No. The redemption flow never renders a price anywhere. Recipients see a curated set of products and variants and pick one; what the buying company paid per head stays between the merchant and the buyer. ### Can a corporate gift code be used more than once? No. Each code is single-use. Once it produces an order, it stops working — trying it again returns the same message a wrong code would. ### Does the recipient need a Shopify account to redeem a corporate gift code? No. The redemption page is a public, code-gated form. No account, login, or app install is required on the recipient's end. ### Can the redemption page live on the merchant's own domain? Yes. The code-entry form can be embedded on a page in the merchant's own Shopify store, so the printed card or email carries the merchant's own domain. ### Is corporate gifting available on every Shopify gifting app by default? On Seed it is enabled per store on request rather than a self-serve toggle — a merchant asks for it to be turned on rather than finding it already live in their dashboard. ## FAQ **What is corporate gifting on Shopify?** A company (an employer, a church, a client-facing business) buys a batch of gifts from a Shopify merchant at an agreed price per head. The merchant issues one single-use code per recipient. Each recipient enters their code on a permanent redemption page, picks one item from a curated selection with no prices shown, types their address, and a real $0 draft order lands in the merchant's Shopify admin. **Do recipients see prices when redeeming a corporate gift code?** No. The redemption flow never renders a price anywhere. Recipients see a curated set of products and variants and pick one; what the buying company paid per head stays between the merchant and the buyer. **Can a corporate gift code be used more than once?** No. Each code is single-use. Once it produces an order, it stops working — trying it again returns the same message a wrong code would, so the redemption page can't be used to guess which codes are valid. **Does the recipient need a Shopify account to redeem a corporate gift code?** No. The redemption page is a public, code-gated form. The recipient enters an 8-character code and their shipping address; no account, login, or app install is required on their end. **Can the redemption page live on the merchant's own domain?** Yes. The code-entry form can be embedded on a page in the merchant's own Shopify store (for example brand.com/pages/gift), so the printed card or email carries the merchant's own domain rather than a third-party link. **Is corporate gifting available on every Shopify gifting app by default?** On Seed it is enabled per store on request rather than a self-serve toggle — a merchant asks for it to be turned on rather than finding it already live in their dashboard.