How do customers check a Shopify gift card balance, and what can merchants see?
First, check the fulfillment status
Everything about this request depends on one fact: has the order shipped yet. If it is unfulfilled, you have options. If it is fulfilled or in transit, you are no longer editing an order, you are arranging an exchange, and the conversation with the customer changes completely. Check the order timeline before you promise anything, because the wrong promise here creates the refund dispute you were trying to avoid.
In the Shopify admin, open the order and look at the fulfillment status first, the payment status second. An unfulfilled, paid order is the easy case. A partially fulfilled order means some items can still change and some cannot, which you need to explain clearly. Train whoever answers customer messages to check this before typing a reply; most bad outcomes in this scenario come from promising an edit that was never possible.
When you can edit the order
For unfulfilled orders, Shopify lets you edit: add or remove line items, change quantities, and adjust the order total, with the customer charged or refunded the difference. This is the cleanest path when the customer wants a different size or color of the same product. Make the edit, confirm the new total with the customer in writing, and note that the edit itself is the confirmation; do not also send a separate "we changed it" email that confuses the thread.
Edits have limits worth knowing. You cannot change the order into something unrecognizable without confusing your own records, and editing does not work once fulfillment has started. If the price difference is significant, get explicit approval before charging the extra amount; an unexpected charge on a card is how a simple size swap becomes a chargeback.
When to cancel and reorder instead
Cancel and reorder is the right call when the change is extensive (half the items are different), when the customer wants to add items that change shipping weight or method, or when the original order is already fulfilled. It is also cleaner when the customer is clearly unsure; a fresh order with a fresh confirmation beats three rounds of edits that nobody can follow.
The mechanics matter: cancel the original, issue the refund promptly, and create the new order, ideally as a draft order you send for the customer to approve and pay. Do not cancel without the replacement ready, or the customer experiences it as "my order was cancelled" rather than "my order was fixed." Speed of the refund is the whole ballgame here; a same-day refund turns a hassle into a loyalty moment.
What to tell the customer
The message template that works: confirm what you are doing, state the timeline, and name the money. "I have updated your order to the blue in size medium. The $12 difference has been refunded and should appear in 3 to 5 business days. Your order still ships Thursday." Every element answers a question the customer would otherwise ask in a follow-up message, which is the real cost driver in these exchanges.
If you cannot do what they asked, say so in the first sentence and offer the alternative immediately. "That order already shipped this morning, so I cannot change it, but here is what I can do: refuse the delivery or send it back with this prepaid label, and I will ship the correct item today." Bad news first, solution second, no hedging in between.
Preventing it next time
A sizing chart linked at the point of size selection, a clear "final sale" flag on items that cannot be changed, and an order confirmation email that arrives within minutes all reduce these requests. The confirmation email is the cheapest intervention: customers who catch their own mistake within the hour are easy to help, while customers who notice three days later are not.
Track how often this happens and why. If size swaps dominate, your size guide is failing. If customers keep adding forgotten items, your checkout may be rushing them. The pattern in the requests is free product-page research, and merchants who read it stop answering the same email every day.
Every January, support inboxes fill with the same message: a customer got a gift card, spent part of it, and now has no idea what is left. The answer is simple once you know where Shopify shows the balance, and where it quietly does not.
How the customer checks the balance
A customer can see their remaining balance on the gift card page itself: the original email or saved card shows the balance when opened, and at checkout, applying the gift card displays the amount it will cover before they commit. Shopify also shows the balance in the customers account on stores using new customer accounts, where saved gift cards appear with their current values.
What customers cannot do is look up a balance from the card number alone on a public page, which is deliberate: the full code acts as the key, and exposing balances by partial code would invite abuse. When a customer writes in with only the last four characters, the merchant has to do the lookup for them.
What the merchant can see in admin
In Shopify admin, the gift cards section lists every issued card with its balance, status, and the last four characters of its code. Searching by those last four characters is how a merchant matches a customers card to its record. The timeline on each card shows when it was issued, adjusted, or spent against, and how much each order used.
That timeline is what resolves most disputes. A customer convinced a balance vanished can be shown, in plain terms, which order used which amount on which date. Merchants can also disable a card that was sent to the wrong email or is suspected in fraud, and issue a replacement, which is safer than editing anything about the original.
When the balance looks wrong
The common causes are mundane: the customer is looking at a second card, the balance updated after a return was processed back to the card, or an order they forgot used part of it. Checking the cards timeline against the customers order history sorts nearly all of these in a few minutes.
The genuinely serious case is unauthorized use, which usually means the full code left the customers hands, most often through a forwarded email or a phishing page. The merchant response is to disable the compromised card immediately and reissue to the verified customer. Waiting helps nobody; balances do not come back once spent.
Related reading
If this topic is useful, these earlier guides go deeper on connected questions: How does store credit work on Shopify, and when should a store offer it?, How do I add a tracking number to a Shopify order after it ships?, and A customer wants to keep the order but get some money back. How do partial refunds work?.
Frequently asked questions
How does a customer check their Shopify gift card balance?
By opening the original gift card email or saved card, which shows the current balance, or by applying the card at checkout, where the amount it covers appears before purchase. On stores with new customer accounts, signed in customers can also see saved gift cards and balances in their account.
Can a merchant look up a gift card by its last four characters?
Yes. In Shopify admin, the gift cards list can be searched by the last four characters of the code, which is the part customers can safely share. The card record shows its balance, status, and a timeline of every issue, adjustment, and order that used it.
What should a merchant do if a gift card balance was spent by someone else?
Disable the card immediately in admin to stop further use, verify the real customers identity and purchase, then issue a replacement card. Balances spent before the card is disabled generally cannot be recovered, so speed matters more than investigation order in the first response.
Does a Shopify gift card balance update after a return?
Yes. When an order paid by gift card is refunded to the gift card, the balance increases by the refunded amount and the change appears in the cards timeline in admin. Customers sometimes miss this and think a balance is wrong when it has actually grown, which the timeline confirms in one look.