Redeem gift certificate WITHOUT having to continue with order

ZC 1.3.9h

Is is possible to allow customers to manually enter their gift certificate code AND redeem it without having to continue with the ordering process?

Right now the customer enters their GC number, but the only way to redeem this is to continue with the order -- which is confusing for them.

Ideally, they would have a button that says "Redeem Gift Certificate" that they could click after entering their code and then see the balance that would be available to apply to their order.

They can do it from the email link that they receive or from the GV FAQ link in the Information sidebox ...

Actually, part of the problem is the email link -- customers will click on it and redeem the GC, but this doesn't seem to stick with them.

So when checking out, they try to enter their code and they get an error message.

What we want to do is eliminate the link/auto redemption and force them to manually enter their redemption code at checkout. But it would be good if we had an intervening step in which they could redeem the code after entering it, but without having to "Continue" with the order.

Once redeemed, the GV is moved to their balance which will show on the checkout_payment and can be applied to the order in full or in part ...

Yes, but there are two problems that arise with the way ZC handles gift certificates in the checkout process:

1) The customer wants to see how much the gift certificate will reduce their order total, especially if they've placed an order designed to keep the price within the bounds of the gift.

But, they can't do this unless they click the "continue" button, which also happens to sit under the Credit Card form. So they think they have to enter a CC # to continue

And if they don't enter a CC# and click continue, they a mixed message:

Success Congratulations, you have redeemed $25.00
Error The credit card number starting with was not entered correctly, or we do not accept that kind of card. Please try again or use another credit card.