You have a choice of three methods of allowing your customers to redeem their points.
Coupons can be used only once and they deduct a value from the total of the products ordered (this doesn’t include shipping or handling fees).
For example, if a customer purchases a $40 product with $10 shipping and the coupon has a value of $60, they do not pay anything for the product but they have to pay for the $10 shipping. They will not be able to use the remaining $20 in the coupon for a future order.
Coupons are automatically available for use after the customer has redeemed their points.
If you would prefer to offer a percentage off the order, rather than a fixed amount, you can do so by setting your redeem type to CouponDiscount. With this option, instead of a coupon being generated for a certain value, the coupon will offer a percentage discount. This is done by multiplying redeemrate by the number of points.
For example, 1000 points at a redeem rate of .01 would equal a 10% discount.
Gift certificates act more like cash and can be reused.
For example, if a person has a $60 gift certificate and purchases $40 worth of goods plus $10 shipping, the remaining $10 can be used again at a later time.
Shipping is always paid for automatically by gift certificate.
Gift certificates are not automatically available for use unless the merchant has set xgiftautoenable=Yes in their shop configuration.