How can i create gift card in magento community edition?

How would you create an online gift card program similar to spafinder or groupon redemptions?

• what are some of the back end things that must happen to take payment, record the purchase, and setup redemption at the store?  whether it's a physical gift card, or online gift certificate, how would you approach it?

• Answer:

  Depends on your influence and network. If you were a startup you would want to start with focusing on a niche marketplace or ecosystem of consumers and merchants and setup a small system of your providers ( deal acceptors / merchants ) that are willing to either use your redemption mechanism. The easiest approach would be to build a reconciliation system based on a bulk commitment or preferred pricing for a set of coupons with the merchant. You would now take these reserved codes that you (deal platform) would turn around and offer to consumers through your marketing platform or channel. As your consumers flock to the merhant and redemptions take place at the merchant place of business, since the offers are already "pre-committed" (to you), the merchant would be able to reconcile the code for each item at the point of sale. Once a bunch of redemptions are done (or when offer expires/is exhausted ) merchant and you reconcile. Depending on the success of the program you re engage. The timing and risk of payments would be another consideration I guess. Depends on the influence of each party. If you were a powerful channel like spafinder, you may have a stronger influence on pricing. Not sure whether there are industry standard practices for payment timing. Ideally the reconciliations after redemptions would be the best situation for you. On the other hand merchants may not like to wait to get paid at the end I all redemptions.