The 3 things that break first when you integrate a gift card API

If you're integrating a gift card API for the first time, the vendor demo will look great. The sandbox will work on the first try. You'll think this is going to be a clean two-week sprint. Then you ship to production and discover the same three problems every team hits: Duplicate orders because retries weren't idempotent. Missed transactions because webhooks didn't arrive. A finance team that can't reconcile your numbers against the vendor's numbers. I write a lot about gift card infrastructure