How to set up a Prepaid program

Prepaid lets contacts keep money on their account with you and spend it later. You set a maximum balance, bring existing balances across with an import, and decide whether contacts can buy prepaid credit themselves in the contacts portal, with a bonus on top of what they pay if you like.

Setting a maximum balance

Go to Store → Prepaid and open Settings in the sidebar.
Under Limit, click Edit limit.
Choose Maximum amount and enter the highest balance a contact can hold, or choose No limit.
Click Save changes.

Enter the maximum in your currency, not in cents: for €500, enter 500. Save changes stays greyed out while Maximum amount is chosen and the field is empty.

The limit counts more than the current balance. A top-up is refused when the contact's balance, plus any positive pending top-ups, plus the new amount would go over the maximum.

Getting an email about pending transactions

If you use the Lightspeed K-Series POS, it holds prepaid top-ups and payments as pending while an order is open, and commits or cancels them when the order is settled. A pending transaction needs your review once the review time set by the POS has passed without it being settled.

To get an email when that happens:

Go to Store → Prepaid → Settings.
Under Pending transactions, click Edit notifications.
Choose Send email notifications and click Save changes.
Notification settings now appears in the section. Click the icon next to it to choose who's notified and on what schedule.

How to commit or decline a pending transaction is covered in Topping up a contact's prepaid balance in the dashboard.

Importing existing balances

If contacts already have balances from a previous card or system, bring them across as prepaid transactions.

Prepare a CSV file with 2 columns: the contact's email address and the amount in cents. For €25, enter 2500.
Go to Data → Imports and click New import.
Choose Prepaid transactions and click Continue.
Go through the steps: File upload, Data, where you match your columns to Email address of the contact and Amount in cents, then Business profile and Finalize. Click Import to start.

Before you import:

The contact must already exist. A row with an email address that isn't one of your contacts fails. Import the contacts first.
Each row adds to the balance, it doesn't set it. A contact who already has €10 and gets a row of 2500 ends up with €35. Import the same file twice and the amounts are added twice.
A balance can't go below 0, and your maximum balance applies. A row that would break either rule fails.
Every row fires the Prepaid transaction created automation trigger. If an automation on that trigger sends an email, every contact in your file gets it. Check those automations before you import.

Topping up in the dashboard and the Business App

To add balance for a contact who pays you at the counter, go to Store → Prepaid → Transactions and click Add transaction. Staff can also top up and deduct prepaid balance at the till with the Business App. Neither takes a payment, so you collect the money yourself. See Topping up a contact's prepaid balance in the dashboard.

Selling prepaid credit in the contacts portal

Contacts can buy prepaid credit themselves in the contacts portal and pay online. You need a connected payment provider for this, see Linking a Mollie account or Linking a Stripe Account.

Choose the amounts contacts can buy

Go to Store → Prepaid.
In the sidebar, under Online sales, click Configuration.
Under Prepaid values, click Create. A new option named "Option (1)", "Option (2)" and so on is added straight away and opens for editing.
Fill in Name and Description. Both are required to save. Add an Image if you like.
Enter the Payable amount in cents, what the contact pays, and the Receivable amount in cents, what lands on their balance.
Click Submit.

If you don't finish an option, delete it rather than leaving it in the list.

Giving a bonus on top-ups

This is how you give contacts extra value for buying credit in advance. Make the receivable amount higher than the payable amount: a payable amount of 4500 with a receivable amount of 5000 means the contact pays €45 and gets €50.

A few options with a growing bonus make bigger top-ups more attractive, for example:

Pay €25, get €27.50
Pay €50, get €55
Pay €100, get €115

Before you set them up:

The bonus only applies to credit bought in the contacts portal. A top-up in the dashboard or the Business App adds exactly the amount you enter. Cashback in the Business App is something else: it adds a percentage of a purchase amount, see Setting up a Business App configuration.
Your maximum balance counts the receivable amount. A contact can't buy an option that would take their balance over the maximum, and an option whose receivable amount is above the maximum can't be bought by anyone.
Changing an option doesn't change orders already paid. Contacts who bought it keep what they received.

Gift cards sold online can carry a bonus the same way. See Selling gift cards online.

You can also ask the AI assistant to list your prepaid values, add one or change one.

Set it up in the portal

Go to Apps → Contacts portal and click Edit contact portal.
In Settings → Payment method, check that your payment provider is selected.
In Settings → Features, check that Prepaid is on. It's on by default, so you only need to turn it on if it was switched off.
Give contacts a way in. The feature doesn't add a button anywhere by itself. Contacts reach the purchase flow from the home page in one of 2 ways, and you can use both:
- A Prepaid section. On the home page, click Add section and choose Prepaid. It shows a Buy prepaid credit button.
- The profile card. Open the Profile card and set Card type to Prepaid. It shows the contact's prepaid balance.

Both options only appear while the Prepaid feature is on. The purchase flow itself has 3 pages you can style in the editor: Select amount, Review prepaid credit order, and Purchase confirmation. See How to configure the contacts portal.

What the contact receives

After paying, the contact gets your prepaid order confirmation email. It's only sent for prepaid purchases. Gift card purchases send their own order confirmation email, so changing one doesn't change the other.

To edit the prepaid one:

Go to Store → Prepaid.
In the sidebar, under Online sales, click Configuration.
In the Order emails section, find the Prepaid order confirmation email card and click View details.

The gift card one, the Gift card order confirmation email, is in the same place under Store → Giftcards. See System emails.

Until November 10, 2026, prepaid and gift card purchases shared one order confirmation email. Your prepaid email starts as an exact copy of it, with the subject, content and sender you'd set, so contacts get the same email as before until you change it. The copy is made the first time you open Store → Prepaid → Configuration or a contact first buys prepaid credit, whichever comes first. If you already had prepaid values set up, it was made when the change went live.

In the email editor, the Tags panel has tags for the recipient, the contact, the order and the prepaid transaction, such as the amount added to the balance. It has no gift card tags. A gift card tag that came along in the copy stays empty in a prepaid confirmation, as it always did, so you can take it out.

The email confirms a purchase, so the contact gets it even if they've unsubscribed from your other emails. A top-up you add in the dashboard doesn't send it.

Every purchase shows up under Store → Prepaid, in the sidebar under Online sales → Orders.