If you are an Etsy seller based in the US, you may have seen a notice in your account about Etsy Gift Cards coming this fall. Site-wide gift cards have been a long-requested feature for buyers and sellers alike, and we could not be more excited about introducing them for the holidays!

Gift cards will be the perfect present for the Etsy-obsessed shopper in your life, but even more importantly they’ll be a way for us to introduce new buyers to Etsy. Our community of buyers has grown incredibly in the past year, which can be attributed largely to people like you spreading the word and marketing your shops. Gift cards will allow us to be more aggressive in our own marketing efforts by distributing gift cards to partners and creating promotional offers.

So how will Etsy Gift Cards work?

Starting this fall, any member will be able to purchase a gift card with a US credit card. You can email the gift card directly to a friend or print one out to give in person. The gift card credit will be in the form of a code, which buyers will use towards purchases at any shop accepting direct checkout.

Therefore, you will need to have direct checkout enabled in order to accept gift cards. Why? Since Etsy is issuing and managing the gift cards, they rely on our direct checkout feature, and the security and legal protections we provide through our payments system. To offer a gift card that works across multiple shops, there must be a central checkout flow connecting shops to Etsy, and not to individual PayPal accounts. This ensures that gift card holders have all the legal protections required by each state, and that sellers aren’t personally liable.

We’re encouraging all shops who haven’t yet signed up, to set up direct checkout before the arrival of gift cards. Since we’ll be using gift cards as promotional tools this holiday season, you will benefit directly if you sign up now.

For those shop owners who haven’t tried direct checkout yet, we’d like to invite you to do so before October with an added bonus: no credit card processing fees now through September 30 — saving you over 3% on all direct checkout orders. We’re covering direct checkout fees on all orders placed during the month of September — not just for those who sign up now. We’ve made a number of enhancements to direct checkout since launch, and encourage you to give it a try. Join the discussion in this forum thread. We hope you join in our excitement: Etsy Gift Cards are coming!