How the Program Works
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have created a website to allow customers to purchase gift certificates for local, independent businesses in British Columbia. This helps us support our community, encourage social distancing, and will allow businesses to maintain some cash flow while we tackle this incredibly difficult situation.
How the Gift Certificate Process Works
The buyer gets an order confirmation email which has a unique order number and also serves as their gift certificate. This includes the business name and the amount. The buyer will print it off and bring it to you to redeem. On the back end, once we sell a gift certificate on behalf of your business, you will have access to our business portal powered by Duoplane to manage and redeem gift certificates in real-time. You do not need to issue your own gift certificates. It would be best to keep track of the balance for partially redeemed gift certificate through the business portal. We use a service called PayEdge (owned by RBC) to send weekly direct deposit payments for the gift certificates sold in the previous seven days. Please note: There is no charge to your business - you will receive the full value of the gift certificates purchased.
Communities join first
Community and regional economic development organizations are providing the funding so that the local, independent businesses in their city/town/village can participate. View all the communities participating and if yours is on the website, then add your business.
