Short answer. The best gift card software for a UK small business in 2026 is usually decided by your till, not by a feature list. Already on Square or SumUp? Their built-in gift cards are free to switch on, redeem on the till you already run, and are the right answer for most single-site shops. On neither, or want gifting separate from your POS? Gift Up! is the strongest standalone product: no monthly fee, 3.49% per card sold, and real Apple and Google Wallet passes. Running a group? Toggle is built for exactly that. Selling vouchers for services and experiences at volume? VoucherCart and Enjovia are voucher engines with commission-led pricing, and GiftPro serves the premium end on quotes. And if what you actually want is repeat visits rather than a spendable balance, a PerkClub gift membership changes what the gift is: items over time, not stored money.
Most roundups of this market are written for restaurants and stop there. This one is for the businesses that actually sell most of the UK's small-business gifting: cafés, barbers, salons, bakeries and florists. Every price below was checked against the provider's own site in August 2026, and the sources are listed at the end.
At a glance: platforms and costs compared
| Platform | Typical cost (Aug 2026) | Cards are | Wallet support | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Square Gift Cards | No monthly fee; standard processing (1.4% + 25p online) | Stored value | Digital card by email or text | Businesses already on Square |
| SumUp Gift Cards | No monthly fee; 2.5% of card value | Stored value | Link or email, no wallet pass | Businesses already on SumUp |
| Gift Up! | No monthly fee; 3.49% per card sold | Stored value | Apple and Google Wallet passes | Standalone gifting on any till |
| Toggle | Fixed plans quoted on application, or 6.5% commission | Stored value and experiences | Apple and Google Wallet on all plans | Groups and multi-site hospitality brands |
| VoucherCart | From £25/month plus commission from 4% | Vouchers and gift cards | No wallet pass advertised | Voucher-led selling across services |
| Enjovia | 4.5% per sale, £10/month minimum | Stored value vouchers | No wallet pass advertised | Pay-as-you-go and seasonal voucher sellers |
| GiftPro | Quoted on application | Stored value and experiences | Not stated | Hotels, restaurants and premium venues |
| PerkClub gift memberships | £19/month per site add-on to a PerkClub plan | Items over time | Recipient's own QR wallet pass | Turning gifts into repeat visits and members |
Prices move; every figure here was verified against the provider's published pricing in August 2026.
The till built-ins
Square Gift Cards
What it is. Square's own gift card product for businesses already on Square POS, and the lowest-friction option on this list for those businesses. Digital eGift cards cost nothing to set up, with no monthly fee; you pay Square's standard processing when a card is bought, which is 1.4% + 25p for UK cards purchased online through your Square eGift ordering page (2.5% + 25p for non-UK cards) or 1.75% in person. There are no extra fees when a card is redeemed, and physical cards start from £0.52 each if you want plastic on the counter too.
Who it suits. Any café, barbershop, salon or bakery whose till is Square. The card is just another tender on the till your team already uses: no new hardware, no training, no reconciliation. If that is you, this is almost certainly your answer, and you can have it live this afternoon.
Honest watch-outs. It only makes sense inside Square, and it is not worth switching POS just for gift cards. The card arrives as a digital card by email or text rather than a wallet pass, which matters only if you want the gift living on the recipient's phone alongside their boarding passes.
SumUp Gift Cards
What it is. The same logic for the SumUp half of the UK independent market. SumUp's gift cards have no monthly cost and charge 2.5% of the gift card value, with standard transaction fees applying when cards are bought. You get a hosted storefront where customers buy cards, the card arrives by email or prints on your receipt printer, and the whole thing is designed for exactly the kind of small independent SumUp already serves.
Who it suits. A SumUp business selling a steady trickle of gifts: a barbershop doing a handful of Father's Day vouchers, a florist with Christmas gifting. 2.5% and no monthly fee is a fair price for zero integration work.
Honest watch-outs. The recipient gets a link or email, and SumUp is the one option here with no wallet pass of any kind. For light gifting volume that will not matter; for a business where gifting is a real revenue line, look further down.
The standalone specialist
Gift Up!
What it is. The strongest pure gift card product for a business that is not on Square or SumUp, or that wants gifting to live apart from the till. There is no monthly fee and no setup cost; you pay 3.49% per gift card sold (with a $0.50 minimum per card), connect your own payment processor so processing sits on top, and prepaid bundles bring the rate down by up to 45% at volume. Complimentary cards, for staff gifts or charity raffles, are charged at a reduced 1.99%.
Who it suits. Any till, any vertical. It is a genuinely polished product: cards are branded to your business, delivery can be scheduled for a birthday or Christmas morning, and recipients get a real wallet pass they can save to their phone's built-in wallet, not a PDF. For a salon on Fresha or a bakery on a legacy till, this is the default choice.
Honest watch-outs. Because Gift Up! is not your till, redemptions are marked off in the Gift Up! app or dashboard rather than the card being another tender. For a steady trickle of gifts that is a minor chore; for a queue of them it is a real workflow to brief staff on.
The hospitality heavyweight
Toggle
What it is. Toggle, from the team behind hospitality software group Access, is what the serious end of UK hospitality uses: multi-site groups, restaurant brands, businesses selling experiences and merchandise alongside stored value. Fixed plans (Essentials, Plus and Expert tiers) are quoted on application, or there is a commission plan at 6.5% of sales with a minimum charge, and a one-off onboarding fee applies to all plans. All plans include saving gift cards to Apple and Google Wallet.
Who it suits. Groups of three or more sites where gifting is a genuine revenue line, and businesses selling experiences (afternoon teas, treatments, tastings) rather than only balances. The e-commerce, physical fulfilment and POS integrations are the best in this list.
Honest watch-outs. For a single-site independent selling a few hundred pounds of gift cards a month, it is a lot of platform. The pricing structure, quotes plus onboarding fees, tells you who it is built for. One café should pick something above; one restaurant group should book the demo.
The voucher engines
VoucherCart
What it is. A UK-founded platform built around selling vouchers, gift cards and bundled offers for services as much as products, with automated promotion tools for pushing voucher campaigns year-round. UK pricing is a Business plan at £25/month (one sales page, one redemption location) or a Pro plan at £75/month (up to ten redemption locations), each plus commission on sales from 4%, with 17% off on annual billing.
Who it suits. A salon or spa selling treatment vouchers, or any business that wants voucher selling to be an actively marketed channel rather than a passive link. The campaign tooling is the differentiator: scheduled offers, seasonal pushes, bundle deals.
Honest watch-outs. The subscription plus commission model means you pay both ways, and no wallet pass is advertised, so the voucher lives in an email. A business that just wants a buy-a-gift-card link will find the platform heavier than it needs.
Enjovia
What it is. A Cardiff-based gift voucher platform with genuinely simple pricing: one plan, pay as you go, 4.5% commission per sale in the UK, with a £10 minimum monthly charge and no setup fees or long-term contracts. Complimentary vouchers created through the system carry no fees, and white-labelling and multi-store support are included rather than gated.
Who it suits. Seasonal and lower-volume sellers. Because the cost is almost entirely per-sale, a florist doing most of its gifting in two weeks of December, or a barbershop testing whether vouchers sell at all, pays close to nothing in the quiet months. It is the lowest-commitment standalone option on this list from a UK supplier.
Honest watch-outs. At 4.5% the per-sale cost is the highest of the standalone platforms (Gift Up! is 3.49%), so at real volume the economics flip. No wallet pass is advertised, and the product is plainer than Gift Up! on branding and delivery polish.
GiftPro
What it is. The premium end of the market: an e-commerce platform for hospitality brands, selling gift cards, experiences and physical products for hotels, restaurants and venues. The client list (Four Seasons, The PIG, Hakkasan) tells the story. Pricing is not published; everything is quoted on application via a demo.
Who it suits. A boutique hotel, destination restaurant or spa where gifting is a five-or-six-figure annual line and the buying experience needs to match the brand.
Honest watch-outs. Unpublished pricing makes comparison shopping impossible, and this is not a product a single-site café or barbershop should be quoting. It earns its place on this list for completeness at the top end, not because it competes with the options above for small independents.
The different mechanic: gift memberships
PerkClub gift memberships
What it is. Our own platform, so read this section knowing that. Everything above sells stored money: a balance the recipient spends down. Gift memberships on PerkClub sell the thing itself: ten coffees over three months, three haircuts, a month of daily flat whites, six bunches of flowers. The buyer pays once, you are paid in full immediately, and the recipient gets their own pass by email with a QR code they can add to Apple or Google Wallet, no app to download. They redeem at your kiosk like any member and can see what is left after every visit.
Pricing. Gifts is a £19/month per site add-on to a PerkClub plan, and plans start at £59/month. If a gift card link is the only thing you want, the free-to-start options above are cheaper ways to get one.
Who it suits. Businesses that want the gift to create a repeat visitor rather than a balance. A £30 gift card is often spent in one or two visits; a gift of ten coffees over three months is ten separate visits, each one a chance for a habit to form, and by the end the recipient has experienced your business as a member. Membership is open to anyone from their first visit, and if they want to carry on when the gift ends, joining takes moments. The full argument is in gift cards vs gift memberships.
Honest watch-outs. This is not a general-purpose gift card: the gift is specific items on a schedule, which is the point, but stored value is more flexible for the buyer who does not know what to give. It also assumes you run (or want) a membership operation; as a standalone voucher tool it is the wrong shape.
How to choose
You take payments with Square. Use Square Gift Cards. Free to set up, redemption on the till you already run, live today. Do not overthink it.
You take payments with SumUp. Use SumUp Gift Cards. 2.5% of card value and no monthly fee is a fair price for zero integration work. Accept the missing wallet pass.
You are on neither, or want gifting separate from your till. Use Gift Up!. Best standalone product, real wallet passes, 3.49% per card and nothing until you sell one.
Your gifting is seasonal or you are just testing. Enjovia's pay-as-you-go model means the quiet months cost you £10, not a subscription you forget to cancel.
You sell treatments, experiences or campaign-led offers. VoucherCart from £25/month plus commission, if you will actually use the promotion tooling that justifies the subscription.
You run a group of three or more sites. Talk to Toggle. It is built for exactly that, and too much platform for one café. At the premium hotel and destination-venue end, GiftPro is the equivalent conversation.
You want the gift to create a repeat visitor, or you already run a membership. Sell gift memberships on PerkClub. Items over time, the recipient gets their own pass, and the gift doubles as a trial of membership.
For a café-specific walkthrough of the same decision, including what to sell, how to price it and where the buy link goes, see how to sell digital gift cards at a coffee shop.
Bottom line
There is no single best gift card system for a UK small business, but there is a short honest decision tree. Your till decides first: Square and SumUp users should switch on the built-in and move on. Everyone else picks by shape: Gift Up! for the best standalone cards, Enjovia for pay-as-you-go simplicity, VoucherCart for campaign-led voucher selling, Toggle and GiftPro for groups and premium venues. And separately from all of that, decide what the gift should be: stored money, which every platform above sells, or the visits themselves, which is what a PerkClub gift membership is for. December's buyers will use whichever link you give them; January's footfall depends on which kind of gift it was.
Common questions
- What is the best gift card system for a small business UK?
- The one that matches your till. If you take payments with Square or SumUp, their built-in gift cards are almost always the right answer: no monthly fee, redemption on the till you already run, live within a day. If you are on neither, or want gifting separate from your POS, Gift Up! is the strongest standalone option at 3.49% per card sold with no monthly fee. Groups of three or more sites should talk to Toggle. And if your goal is repeat visits rather than a spendable balance, an item-based gift membership on PerkClub sells the visits themselves.
- How much does gift card software cost?
- As of August 2026, less than most owners expect, and usually nothing up front. Square eGift Cards are free to set up with standard processing (1.4% + 25p for UK cards bought online). SumUp charges 2.5% of card value with no monthly fee. Gift Up! charges 3.49% per card sold. VoucherCart's UK Business plan is £25/month plus commission from 4%. Enjovia charges 4.5% per sale with a £10/month minimum. Toggle's fixed plans and GiftPro are quoted on application. PerkClub's Gifts add-on is £19/month per site on top of a PerkClub plan. Always check current pricing before committing.
- Can customers add gift cards to Apple Wallet?
- On some platforms, yes. Gift Up! recipients can save their card to their phone's built-in wallet, Toggle includes saving gift cards to Apple and Google Wallet on all its plans, and Shopify gift cards can also be added to Apple Wallet. Square and SumUp deliver digital cards by email or link rather than as wallet passes, and VoucherCart, Enjovia and GiftPro do not advertise wallet passes. PerkClub gift memberships go further: the recipient gets their own pass in Apple or Google Wallet and can see what is left on it after every visit.
- What is the difference between a gift card and a gift membership?
- A gift card is stored money: the recipient holds a balance and spends it down, often in one or two transactions. A gift membership is the thing itself: ten coffees, three haircuts or six bunches of flowers, delivered over time. The recipient knows exactly what they got, there is no awkward part-payment when the balance runs low, and each redemption is a separate visit rather than one transaction that drains the balance. Stored value suits gifting flexibility; item-based gifts suit building a visiting habit.
- Do gift cards have to have an expiry date in the UK?
- No UK law sets a minimum or maximum expiry for gift cards, but your terms must be clear and fair under consumer law, and short expiries generate complaints out of all proportion to what they save you. Twelve months is a common, defensible choice. Item-based gifts are easier to reason about because the gift states its own terms in the name: ten coffees over three months is exactly what it says.