Your gift cards now sell in every currency you do
Giftnote gift cards now issue in the customer's local currency across Shopify Markets. One product, every market, and a gift whose value stops moving the moment it is bought.
If you sell into more than one country, gift cards have quietly been the worst-performing product in your catalogue. Not because people did not want them. Because of what happened after they bought one.
That is now fixed. Giftnote gift cards issue in the customer's local currency across every Shopify Market you sell in.
What a gift card is supposed to be
A gift card is a promise about an amount of money. Someone spends £100 so that another person can have £100 of something lovely.
Until this year, on a multi-market Shopify store, that promise did not hold. Shopify issued gift cards only in the store's base currency, so a UK customer buying a £100 card from an Australian brand was really issuing $188 AUD. The recipient's balance then drifted with the exchange rate between the day it was bought and the day they spent it.
Nobody involved wanted that. It was a platform limitation, and it made international gift cards a slightly embarrassing product to sell.
A £100 gift card is now worth £100. That is the whole update, and it is a bigger deal than it sounds.
Giftnote POV
A gift is a promise about value. If the value moves between the giving and the spending, the promise weakens every day the card sits unredeemed. Local currency fixes that at the root.
What it unlocks
Gift cards are the highest-leverage product a global brand sells, because they are the one product where the buyer and the recipient are usually different people in the same country, and the brand is somewhere else entirely.
perfectwhitetee, the Los Angeles essentials label, runs a gift card with four occasion designs and denominations from $50 to $500. Khy, Kylie Jenner's fashion brand, uses one to solve the problem that its collections drop and sell through before a gifter can decide on a size. Both sell well beyond their home market.
For brands like these, a gift card is often the first thing an international customer buys, and the first thing an international recipient ever receives. It is a poor moment for the amount to be wrong.
What changes for your store
- One gift card product covers every market you sell in
- The recipient's balance is fixed in the currency they will spend it in
- No separate gift card product per region, unless you want one
- Nothing to reconfigure — it works on your existing setup
Why this matters more for gifting than for anything else
An ordinary international order is settled in minutes. The customer pays, the currency converts, and it is done.
A gift card is different. It is bought in one moment and spent in another, often weeks or months later, by somebody who was not part of the purchase. Every day in between used to be a day the value could drift.
That gap is also where the commercial opportunity sits. A gift card recipient is, almost by definition, a new customer: they did not choose you, someone chose you for them, and they arrive holding credit to spend on whatever they like.
Getting the currency right is what makes that first impression land properly rather than requiring an explanation.
For brands running multiple storefronts
If you run regional stores, this removes one more reason to fragment your catalogue. One gift card, every market, one thing to merchandise and one thing to maintain.
It also means the gifting programme you have built in your home market travels. The branded message, the scheduled delivery, the recipient capture into Klaviyo — all of it now works the same way in every currency you trade in.
There is one small display quirk worth knowing about, involving how Shopify handles currency symbols inside variant names, and a two-minute fix for it. That is covered in the help centre rather than here.
See gift cards working across every market you sell in
Book a personalised demo, or install Giftnote on your Shopify store and try every plan free for 30 days.
Frequently asked questions
Do Shopify gift cards work in multiple currencies?
Yes. Shopify introduced local-currency gift cards in June 2026 and Giftnote added support in August 2026, so a Giftnote gift card now issues in the customer's local currency across Shopify Markets.
Does the gift card balance change with the exchange rate?
No. The card is issued in the customer's local currency, so the balance stays fixed in the currency the recipient will actually spend it in.
Do I need a separate gift card product for each market?
No. A single gift card product covers every market. Separate products per region remain an option if you want different denominations or artwork by market.
Do I need to change any settings to enable multi-currency gift cards?
No. It works on your existing setup with no reconfiguration.
Why are gift cards valuable for international brands?
Because a gift card recipient is almost always a new customer, and often the first person in that market to experience the brand. Roughly three quarters of gift recipients are new to the brand they receive from.
What is the best gift card app for a Shopify Markets store?
Giftnote issues gift cards in the customer's local currency across all markets from a single product, with branded delivery by email or SMS, scheduled sending, balance checking and recipient capture into Klaviyo.
