Prepaid balance management
Some publishers fund gift card orders from a prepaid balance, often called a float. This page explains what that means and how to manage it safely.
Who this applies to
A publisher either takes payment through the Spendstream hosted payment page, or funds orders from a prepaid balance held with Spendstream. Your Spendstream contact will confirm which model your account uses. If you use the hosted payment page, you do not need to manage a prepaid balance for gift card orders. See Hosted payment model.
How the balance is used
With the prepaid model, each gift card order draws the cost of the card from your balance. If the balance is too low, the order cannot be issued.
Endpoint | Purpose |
| Issues a gift card and draws on your prepaid balance. |
| Reads your prepaid balance. Access may be permission gated, so ask Spendstream if it is not available to you. |
| Checks the balance on an issued gift card. |
Good practice
- Check the balance before you place an order, and stop offering purchases when it is low.
- Set your own low balance alert well above the value of a typical day’s orders.
- Top up in good time. Arrange how top ups are made with Spendstream.
- Record the transaction identifier for every order so you can match spend to the balance.
- Remember that retrying an order can issue a second card and spend the balance twice. See Fraud and duplicate prevention.
Staging
On staging, gift card issuance is sandboxed. No real money is taken and no real balance is spent, so use staging to rehearse the flow without cost.
⚠️ Warning: Production orders draw real balance. Confirm that your checks work on staging before you go live.
On this page
- Prepaid balance management