Blackhawk Debuts a Consolidated Stored Value Platform for Brands

Blackhawk Network, best known as a gift card platform, says it wants to make it easier for brands to present a consolidated view of a consumer’s gift card balance, refunds, promotional funds, loyalty rewards, and funds used to appease unhappy shoppers.

The company’s new stored-value platform enables brands to send all of the data pertaining to these non-purchase transactions via a Blackhawk Digital Wallet API. In turn, the brand then presents this information to consumers on their Web sites, mobile apps, and checkout flows.

Pleasanton, Calif.-based Blackhawk says it handles all of the accounting, compliance, and expiration rules across the balance types.

In use already with one social-commerce service, the new platform helped it migrate from just offering gift cards to an entire stored-value ecosystem that includes refunds, appeasement, credits, and gift cards displayed as a single balance.

One payoff for brands, at least in this social commerce service’s instance, is the improved retention of these funds. Blackhawk says approximately 90% of funds added to the wallet was spent within 30 days, and 95% was spend within 60 days.

In another instance, a theme park and entertainment operator worked with its cobranded payment cards to consolidate park admission, in-park spending accounts, and loyalty rewards into a single balance.

“What we’re seeing is that when you give brands a way to keep customer funds in their ecosystem as stored value rather than pushing them back out as refunds, the economics completely change,” Adam Rauchut, Blackhawk vice president of products, says in a statement. “You eliminate the cost of processing those refunds, you avoid interchange fees on the subsequent purchases, and you create opportunities for targeted promotions that drive incremental spend. It’s a fundamental shift from stored value as just a payment method to stored value as a comprehensive engagement platform.”

Blackhawk says the Digital Wallet API enables brands to use a single integration into their existing consumer interfaces. While the platform currently works with dollars, Blackhawk says it is exploring other funding methods, such as stablecoins.