Direct Credit: Prepaid Store Credit With a Bonus, Inside Your Shop Only

Every other reward model in Gamma decides, in advance, exactly what a customer gets and often exactly when. Direct Credit doesn’t — it grants a spendable balance instead, and leaves the how and when entirely up to the customer. The customer pays the shop upfront and gets more credit to spend there (for example, pays €100 and gets €120), with each shop setting its own bonus percentage. The credit shows up in Gamma Wallet and sits there until the customer decides to use it, in whatever amount they choose, on whatever they choose to buy.

Why it’s usually paired with something else

Direct Credit is flexible on the customer’s side and fully contained on the merchant’s — the balance never leaves the shop’s own ecosystem the way a cash refund would. That combination is exactly why it suits shops whose regulars already come back often: the bonus gives them a reason to pay in advance, and the credit can only be spent at that shop.

Where it fits

• A café letting regulars top up a balance once, then pay it down at their own pace across future visits instead of paying per drink each time.
• A restaurant selling prepaid credit with a bonus ahead of an occasion, such as a birthday or an anniversary, that stays usable over multiple future visits rather than a single sitting.
• A retail shop offering regulars prepaid store credit with a bonus, while still giving the customer full freedom over what they spend it on.

The two things worth knowing before you turn it on

Credit is valid for 12 months by default, and the shop can set its own period, for example to tie it to a season or a specific occasion. And Direct Credit is rarely the only thing a shop runs; it usually sits alongside another model, giving the customer a balance they have real control over, rather than a rigid, single-use voucher.

If the goal is control and flexibility for the customer, with the value staying inside the shop, Direct Credit is the model built for exactly that trade-off.