Articles from Blackhawk Network

Global branded payments leader Blackhawk Network (BHN) today announced a significant philanthropic milestone, having donated $2.7 million to 73 charities worldwide in 2024. This achievement reflects the company's continued dedication to supporting charitable causes and driving meaningful connections throughout the world. Since its inception, BHN has been committed to empowering communities and strengthening partnerships with organizations making a difference globally.

Branded payments provider Blackhawk Network (BHN) today announced yet another step in its ongoing efforts to reduce its environmental footprint at a global level. Supporting Mastercard’s commitment to remove first–use, PVC plastics from payment cards on its network by 2028, BHN is transitioning its network branded open-loop prepaid products, from plastic to paper-based materials. The collaboration first went live last year in the US and Canada.

Global branded payments provider Blackhawk Network (BHN) is redefining the way consumers can send digital gifts with the launch of eGift Card Links. The new capability simplifies digital gifting in time for the busy holiday shopping season, giving users additional options for delivering eGift cards. BHN partners—including Sephora, Nordstrom, PlayStation, Grubhub, The Cheesecake Factory, Five Guys, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Cracker Barrel Old Country Store and many other brands consumers know and love—now offer shoppers the ability to simply purchase an eGift card and copy/paste a link to it into a text, social messaging app, or email.

Global branded payments provider, Blackhawk Network (BHN) has partnered with Visa Inc. and Mastercard to bring the speed, convenience and security of an eGift into physical retail stores with the launch of Visa® eGift and Mastercard® eGift. The patented, tamper-evident gift carrier does not have a card inside. Rather, once the eGift is activated at purchase, consumers use a mobile device to scan the QR code inside the carrier to load the funds directly to their digital wallet for immediate use in-store using tap-to-pay terminals or online. The Visa® eGift and Mastercard® eGift will be available nationwide for purchase at over 15,000 locations including retailers such as Kroger, Wegmans and Weis Markets.

Just in time for the holiday shopping season, global payments leader Blackhawk Network (BHN) has announced its partnership with DoorDash to expand the food delivery platform’s US and Canadian gift card programs. DoorDash gift cards and eGift options are now available on Giftcards.com and other major stores and retailers across North America. DoorDash is also leveraging BHN’s SaaS-based B2B gift card program to offer gift cards in bulk to businesses looking to incentivize customers, reward employees, fundraise and drive brand engagement.

With more gifting occasions, fewer shopping days and tighter budgets this year, consumers plan to look for a little extra help with their holiday shopping, according to the annual holiday forecast from global branded payments provider, Blackhawk Network (BHN). Shoppers will look to gift cards to spread holiday cheer, with surveyed consumers planning to spend half of their holiday budget on gift cards. Savvy consumers also plan to tap AI for shopping help and will look to leverage loyalty programs and stored value to power their holiday spending this year.

New research1 from leading branded payments provider, Blackhawk Network (BHN), reveals shifting gift card and gifting preferences among U.S. consumers. The study provides retailers and restaurants with insight into how consumers are using and purchasing gift cards and offers key takeaways on how to maximize gift card programs. Among the most notable shifts found in the research: men have emerged as the primary gift card buyer in the U.S. for the first time. The research also highlights the opportunities everyday gifting presents for retailers and how an industry-wide shift to more sustainable gifting is resonating with consumers.

For the seventh consecutive year, leading branded payments provider Blackhawk Network (BHN) has collaborated with NAPCO Research on its market-leading report on the gift card industry1. The 2024 assessment evaluated the digital gift card programs of 100 top U.S. merchants and found continued consumer interest in digital gift cards shows no signs of slowing, making investments in online gift card programs crucial for merchant success.

Global branded payments provider Blackhawk Network (BHN) today announced the launch of Select Codes, an innovative digital code-to-catalog designed for businesses. Select Codes provides reward recipients with the ultimate choice and allows businesses to quickly and simply distribute codes to customers, employees and more. Once received, the recipient swaps the code for their choice of one or many retailer eGifts or virtual prepaid cards, from a selection curated by the business. Select Codes offers companies the opportunity to enhance their employee recognition programs and customer loyalty initiatives with a seamless and personalized digital reward experience, backed by BHN’s unrivaled catalog of eGift brands.

Leading branded payments provider, Blackhawk Network (BHN), has partnered with Roblox, a global immersive platform for communication and connection, to offer Austrian (EUR), Belgian (EUR), Swiss Franc (CFH), and Brazilian Real (BRL) digital gift cards on Roblox’s gift card site, Roblox.com/giftcards. Consumers in each respective country can now purchase Roblox digital gift cards in their local currencies.

To further enhance the power of its global rewards platform, branded payments provider Blackhawk Network (BHN) today confirmed that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire digital B2B gift card rewards innovator Tango Card (Tango).

The annual holiday forecast1 from global branded payments provider, Blackhawk Network (BHN), found shoppers surveyed plan to spend 43% of their holiday budget on gift cards this year. This trend is largely fueled by Gen Z consumers as the youngest generation of shoppers drives noticeable shifts in holiday shopping behaviors. The report also found that consumers aren’t starting their holiday shopping as early as they did in 2022 with many planning to wait until the last weeks of December this year.

Consumer companies are struggling to grow in the face of mounting customer acquisition costs, and the most promising source of new buyers is their own existing customer base. To address this growing market demand for refer-a-friend solutions that accelerate customer acquisition, Blackhawk Network (BHN), a global branded payments provider, is now partnered with Extole, a customer engagement technology company. Through the partnership, BHN now empowers its clients to drive increased customer acquisition by delivering automated, near-real-time digital rewards and incentives to their customers for referring friends or completing value-generating activities through Extole’s platform. These rewards can easily integrate into mobile wallets and help meet increasing consumer preferences for on-the-go payment and reward options.

Blackhawk Network (BHN) today announces BHN Rewards Integrates With Salesforce: Engage Prospects, Appease Customers on Salesforce AppExchange, which empowers customers to leverage cost- and time-efficient, innovative digital rewards technology to help drive customer loyalty. The tool enables businesses to send personalized digital gift and prepaid cards to build rapport and drive engagement with sales prospects and existing customers for taking actions like joining webinars or demonstrations, and to quickly appease dissatisfied customers on the spot.

WH Smith North America (WHSNA), incorporating Marshall Retail Group—America’s leading specialty retailer in airport and casino-resort marketplaces—has partnered with global branded payments provider Blackhawk Network (BHN) to launch Gift Card Malls® in airport and top casino resorts and shopping centers across the country. Through the partnership, WHSNA will become one of the first retailers in the U.S. to offer Gift Card Malls in airports through its chain of over 300 unique-banner airport stores. WHSNA also will offer Gift Card Malls in select casino resort gift, apparel and shopping areas.

As part of its ongoing initiatives aimed to positively impact the environment at a global level, branded payments provider Blackhawk Network (BHN) is working alongside Visa to transition its network branded prepaid products distributed by third party retail networks from plastic to paper-based materials. The initiative will roll out in the US, Canada and Australia later this year. Converting to sustainable materials has the potential to impact over 350 million open loop and multi-branded products produced by BHN and up to another 700M third party cards as BHN works to get nearly all content converted to sustainable materials. This shift to more eco-friendly products benefits the planet with minimal disruption to merchants, issuers, brands, and consumers, as paper-based products still offer the convenience and reliability of shopping where Visa is accepted.

Bashas’—a private, family-owned and purpose-driven chain of grocery stores, operated by The Raley’s Companies—has joined global branded payments provider Blackhawk Network’s (BHN) vast distribution network and partnered with the gift card pioneer to expand gifting options in its 112 supermarket locations – including Bashas’, AJ’s Fine Foods, Eddie’s Country Store, and Food City—across Arizona and New Mexico. Through the partnership, BHN brings the convenience of a wide variety of popular gifting and shopping options to Bashas’ customers and expands its suite of options with several multi-brand original content gift cards.

Recent research1 from Blackhawk Network (BHN), the leader in global branded payment technologies, shows that nearly all consumers surveyed are still concerned about the economy and continue to adapt their shopping and gifting behaviors accordingly. Almost all surveyed consumers (97%) report they are concerned about cost-of-living pressures and 61% plan to change their shopping behaviors to navigate inflation. Among those changes, consumers surveyed are using gift cards to manage or control spending and plan to purchase more gift cards and increase the values of the gift cards that they purchase.

Global branded payments provider Blackhawk Network (BHN) is expanding its relationship with European branded payments company Recharge.com to distribute gift cards digitally through BHN’s vast network in the US and Canada. The announcement builds on Recharge.com and BHN’s existing collaboration in Europe, boosting digital gift card options for consumers in North America.

With more than $181 billion in sports betting wagers placed across the US since 20181, the industry continues its significant growth as new states legalize sports betting each year. Today, Blackhawk Network (BHN) announced the expansion of its Game On® card to residents of Maryland, Kansas and Wyoming.

Expanding on the success of its charitable gift cards, Blackhawk Network (BHN®) and the American Cancer Society (ACS) have announced the launch of a new Giving Good® gift card focused on supporting the impactful research and advocacy work of ACS. The ACS Giving Good gift card is part of the growing line of gift cards that brings top brands together onto a single card, with a portion of the load value directly benefitting a charitable cause. Launched in 2020, the Giving Good Card program has raised more than $2.8 million in funds for its charity partners including Feeding America, Habitat for Humanity, Make-A-Wish®, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Wounded Warrior Project1.

A new report1 commissioned by Blackhawk Network (BHN), a leader in global branded payments and conducted by leading research firm, NAPCO Research, found that retailers are evolving and innovating on ways to sell, use or deliver gift cards as both consumer demand and the number of gift card use cases continue to increase. Now in its sixth consecutive year, the assessment evaluates the gift card programs of more than 100 top US retailers—identifying emerging industry trends, areas of opportunity and actionable best practices for retailers looking to optimize their omnicommerce gift card and payment programs.

Global branded payments provider Blackhawk Network (BHN) has partnered with Gift of College to expand the higher education funding platform’s digital gift card program with distribution at select digital retailers in the BHN US retailer network. One of the first platforms of its kind, Gift of College allows consumers to give a meaningful gift to family and friends by contributing to a 529 college savings, ABLE disability savings, or student loan account. Just in time for kindergarten-through-college graduation season, more gift-givers across the country will be able to leverage BHN’s eCommerce distribution network to send eGifts quickly and easily via online gift card retailers, including Giftcards.com, Giftcardmall.com, Kroger.com, Meijer.com, Topsmarkets.com and more.

Shoppers faced historically high costs this past holiday season, fueling sales of gift cards which consumers leveraged to stay on budget and adjust for inflation, according to new data1 from Blackhawk Network. The findings, based on consumer research and Blackhawk’s own U.S. sales data, showed another year of sustained growth in overall gift card sales, with double-digit increases in eCommerce and egift sales.

Holiday shopping is in full swing. What should be a joyous experience of finding the perfect holiday gift can easily become stressful in the face of price increases, long lines, out-of-stock items, or shipping delays. This stress is often further heightened by worrying about purchasing the wrong gift. Giftcards.com, a leading ecommerce site for gift cards, offers a one-stop shop for everyone on your list with new, innovative gift card options that offer more choice, personalization and flexibility this holiday.