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Getting started with pre-encoded cards
Getting started with pre-encoded cards

Card readers, card designs, ordering and managing… sound complex? Don’t worry, it’s easy with Toggle...

Oskar Smith avatar
Written by Oskar Smith
Updated over a week ago

Selling pre-encoded cards

Toggle is set up to allow you to be your own fulfilment house for physical pre-encoded card orders. These cards come with a code already on them, which may be printed on, as well as encoded in a magstripe and / or a QR code. We’ve built a dashboard to help you manage physical card orders from your web shop. You can also sell your Toggle cards direct on site through your EPOS or out POS Mode.

But before you get that far, there are a few things you need to do.

  1. Design your cards and presentation packs

  2. Request a batch of card numbers from Toggle

  3. Send over your designs and card numbers to your printer to have your cards and presentation carriers printed.

  4. If you're fulfilling web shop orders yourself, buy a USB Card reader for fulfilling your web shop orders (you can do it without, but it’s easier to have one)

  5. Make sure your EPOS is configured to work with Toggle

Design your cards

Most card printers have guidelines for sizing, bleed guidelines etc. so contact your card printer to get those guidelines. If you’ve not got a card provider, ask us, we’ve got some we can recommend to you.

For Toggle to work, there are a few things you’ll need to include on your design for it to be functional:

  • 19 digit unique code

  • 6 digit PIN number

  • An encouragement for your guests to register their card with the registration URL

  • Your terms and conditions, or a URL to them

Get creative with the front of your card design! But make sure the back has all the functional information you need.

Presentation packs

For a gift card to be functional, all you need is a card. But to really make it stand out, you’ll probably want to order some presentation packs too. Speak to your printers and get some ideas - there are lots to choose from.

One thing to remember: you’ll need somewhere to write the personal messages that customers write for their card orders. You can either opt to write these in by hand or buy a label printer. If you opt for labels, make sure your labels will fit somewhere on your presentation packs! Or you can turn off personal messages altogether.

Order your cards

Contact our support team to have some physical card numbers created for you. Let us know how many you want to order and we’ll send you a CSV with a list of unique card numbers and PIN codes.

You can now send the CSV off with your design to order your cards from your card provider. They’ll print the cards and encode the numbers onto the magstripes.

If you get asked by your printer, get them encoded on Track 2 at High Coervicity ("HiCo").

And voila, a few days later you should have some shiny, encoded gift cards ready to sell!

If you have Toggle connected with your EPOS system, you’ll also probably want to send some of these cards to your sites so that they can be sold direct to customers in person. 

USB Card readers

USB Card readers? Sounds like black magic, right? 

Not really, these things are cheap and simple to use and just means you don’t have to type out those long digit card numbers by hand. Buy a 3-track USB reader for around £15-£20 online and plug it straight into your computer.

Once connected, you’ll be able to swipe a physical card through it to read the number encoded on it. It’ll make your life fulfilling orders a doddle. 

Ready to go?

Once you have your cards and presentation packs ready, you can switch over to using Magnetic Stripe cards in Toggle. Head to Settings > General in your Toggle dashboard to turn on this feature.

Once you have this turned on, any new orders from your web shop will arrive in your pending order queue without a card number, ready for you to swipe one through to assign a card before popping it in an envelope and posting it out.

And that’s it. That wasn’t too hard was it :)

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