This article is for Shopify merchants only.
Your loyalty campaign turns each qualifying purchase into store credit for the customer who made it. This article covers the full life of that credit — how it's calculated, when your customer actually receives it, and how it adjusts automatically when orders change — so the credit your customers hold always reflects real, completed purchases.
For creating a campaign, choosing who's enrolled, and the loyalty emails, see the companion article [Shopify] Setting up a loyalty campaign.
What counts as a qualifying purchase
Store credit is earned on an order's qualifying spend — the order subtotal, with a few exclusions so customers earn on what they actually paid for products:
Shipping is excluded.
Taxes are excluded.
Any store credit applied to the order is subtracted.
Any gift card payments are subtracted.
The reward is your campaign's commission rate applied to the qualifying spend, rounded down to the cent. For example, a 5% rate on an $80 qualifying subtotal earns $4.00 in store credit. If the qualifying spend works out to zero — say the customer paid entirely with store credit or gift cards — no credit is earned on that order.
Earning applies to the whole qualifying subtotal: there's currently no way to limit earning to specific products, collections, or SKUs.
From purchase to spendable credit
Credit reaches your customer in two stages, so it's only ever backed by orders that actually ship:
Earned and pending. When the order is placed, the credit is calculated and held as pending against that order. Pending credit isn't spendable yet and doesn't notify the customer — it's the safety window that makes sure no credit is ever issued for an order that later changes or never ships.
Released on fulfillment. When Shopify reports the order fulfilled, the pending credit is released to the customer's Shopify account as native store credit — and the loyalty email goes out at this moment, telling them about the credit that's now ready to spend.
If an order arrives already fulfilled — digital products, for example — the pending stage is skipped and the credit is issued right away.
Note: An order's credit is released when the entire order is fulfilled. If you ship an order in parts, the customer receives their credit when the last part is marked fulfilled.
To summarize the timing:
What happens | Pending credit | Spendable store credit |
Order placed (not yet fulfilled) | Increases | No change |
Order fulfilled | Cleared | Increases — customer notified |
Order already fulfilled when processed | — | Increases immediately |
Where customers see and spend their credit
Loyalty credit is native Shopify store credit — not a coupon code. Your customers see their balance in their Shopify customer account, and it's applied at checkout as a store credit payment, like any other store credit on your store. There's no separate ReferralCandy wallet, portal, code, or redemption step.
Related: For how store credit behaves at checkout — including the account login requirements and combining credit with other payment methods — see [Shopify] Advocate reward: Store credits.
Refunds, cancellations, and order edits
Loyalty credit always stays tied to the order that earned it, so when that order changes, the credit adjusts automatically — there's nothing for you to reconcile by hand. What matters is the signal Shopify sends: a cancellation, a refund, or an order edit.
While the credit is still pending (order not yet fulfilled)
Cancellation — cancelling an unfulfilled order voids its pending credit immediately. If a cancellation arrives together with refund or edit information, the cancellation takes priority.
Refund (partial or full) — the pending credit is reduced in line with the refunded amount; a full refund removes it entirely. The adjustment never goes below zero — a customer can't end up owing credit from an order — and a repeated copy of the same refund event won't deduct twice.
Order edit without a refund — if items or prices change, the pending credit re-aligns to the order's new subtotal, up or down.
After the credit has been released
Refunds claw back the matching share. The refunded amount (line items only — shipping is excluded, just like at earn time) is multiplied by the rate the credit was originally issued under, and that much is reversed from the customer's store credit balance.
If the customer has already spent the credit, the unrecoverable part is written off on our side — your customer is never chased for credit they've already used.
The reversal is capped to that order's credit — credit the customer earned from their other orders is never touched.
Order edits that increase the order's value can grant additional credit.
What doesn't adjust automatically
Order edits that don't produce a Shopify refund signal.
Refunds made outside Shopify's refund flow — for example, compensating a customer with a manually issued gift card. In these cases, adjust the customer's store credit yourself in your Shopify admin if needed.
Changing your reward rate
You can change your campaign's commission rate at any time on its Settings tab. The new rate applies to new orders from that moment on; orders already in flight are handled like this:
Order situation | Which rate applies |
New orders after the change | The new rate |
Pending orders that fulfill normally | The original rate — released at the amount originally earned |
Credit already released to customers | Not recalculated |
Pending orders edited or refunded after the change | Adjusted at the current (new) rate |
Clawbacks on credit released before the change | The original rate it was issued under |
If you'd rather avoid the edge cases entirely, change your rate at a quiet moment — once outstanding orders have fulfilled and settled.
Stopping a campaign
You can stop a loyalty campaign at any time from its Campaign state tab, and set it live again later. Your customers keep every credit that's already been issued — stopping only ends new earning:
No new credit is earned while the campaign is stopped.
Pending credit on unfulfilled orders isn't released while the campaign is stopped.
Already-issued credit stays on your customers' accounts, spendable as usual.
If you're winding a campaign down for good and want customers to receive everything they've earned, let in-flight orders fulfill before you stop — pending credit on orders that fulfill while the campaign is stopped stays unreleased.
Setting the campaign live again resumes earning and releasing for new activity.
Loyalty store credit FAQ
Why hasn't my customer received their store credit?
Why hasn't my customer received their store credit?
The most common reasons a customer hasn't received loyalty store credit, in order:
The order isn't fully fulfilled yet — credit is released only when Shopify reports the entire order fulfilled, so an order shipped in parts waits for the last package.
The customer wasn't enrolled when the order was processed — eligibility is checked at order time, so a customer who entered your target audience only after placing the order doesn't earn for that order.
The campaign wasn't live when the order was placed.
The credit exists but the loyalty emails are turned off — check the customer's record in your Shopify admin to see their store credit balance.
If none of these explain it, let us know and our support team can take a look.
Does loyalty store credit expire?
Does loyalty store credit expire?
By default, no — issued store credit never expires. If you set Store credit expiry in days on the campaign's Settings tab, credit expires that many days after it's issued.
What happens if an order is refunded after the customer spent the credit?
What happens if an order is refunded after the customer spent the credit?
The clawback only reverses what's still available on the customer's store credit balance; whatever they already spent is written off on our side. Your customer is never asked to pay back credit they've used, and credit they earned from other orders isn't touched.
Do purchases paid with store credit or gift cards earn credit?
Do purchases paid with store credit or gift cards earn credit?
The portion of an order paid with store credit or gift cards doesn't earn — those amounts are subtracted from the qualifying spend. An order paid entirely with store credit or gift cards earns nothing, and the portion paid with regular payment methods earns normally.
How can I see how much credit a customer has?
How can I see how much credit a customer has?
Your campaign's Analytics tab shows the totals — store credit issued and store credit pending. For an individual customer, open their customer record in your Shopify admin: loyalty credit is native Shopify store credit, so their balance lives there.
My customers buy through a subscription app like Recharge — is a loyalty campaign a good fit?
My customers buy through a subscription app like Recharge — is a loyalty campaign a good fit?
It can work nicely as a secondary incentive. Loyalty credit is Shopify store credit: it only applies in Shopify's own checkout (plus POS and the Shop app), and it can't pay recurring subscription bills — initial subscription purchases through your checkout are fine. That's a Shopify-wide rule, not specific to Recharge or any one app. So while subscribers can't put credit toward their renewals, they can spend it on one-off purchases through your regular checkout — a nudge toward trying products beyond their subscription. If you want a reward subscribers can apply more directly, a Coupon reward on your referral and affiliate campaigns usually fits subscription-first stores better — see [Shopify] Advocate reward: Store credits for the full store credit limitations.