Blackhawk Network Announces New Market-Leading Features for its Digital Services Platform

PLEASANTON, Calif., March 4, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Blackhawk Network, Inc., a leading prepaid and payments network, announced today it has expanded its digital services platform to provide additional market-leading features to meet consumers' gift card needs. The digital services platform is now enabled with exchange services, which allows users to instantly sell their retail, restaurant and a large variety of other brands' gift cards.  These enhancements mark the first application of Blackhawk Network's exchange services directly in a mobile wallet platform, and are available for developers and Blackhawk partners.  We are showcasing these features in the free GoWallet mobile app on iOS, with support for Android expected to come soon.

The exchange services allow users to easily sell physical and digital gift cards right from their smart phone or tablet using the GoWallet mobile app. Users receive an offer quote for their gift card and, if accepted, they will receive the quoted amount loaded on a GiftCardMall.com e-gift, which they can use to buy their preferred gift card at GiftCardMall.com.  More cash-out options will be coming soon.

Blackhawk Network's digital services platform is also announcing the ability to quickly and accurately scan gift cards directly into the wallet platform, using the GoWallet mobile app. The scan and optical character recognition feature utilizes the user's smartphone camera instead of requiring the manual input of numbers, making uploading of gift cards fast and more convenient.

These enhanced platform capabilities are just examples of ongoing innovation with Blackhawk Network's digital services and can be accessed with the GoWallet mobile app.  They are also available for Blackhawk Network's partners through its digital services APIs.

"With these new features, Blackhawk's digital services continues to innovate the way consumers manage, spend and get great value from their preferred gift cards across retailers," said Tomas Campos, Blackhawk Network general manager, digital & emerging services. "Our digital services platform provides consumers an elegant way to input, manage, redeem and exchange gift cards.  We are excited about the convenience and value our platform provides consumers and the opportunities this enables for our partners through our digital services APIs."

Any gift card, anytime, anywhere.

In addition to the exchange and card scan capabilities, GoWallet enables users to:

• Easily upload any gift card to GoWallet
• Access real-time gift card balances for supported gift cards
• Quickly redeem gift cards in-store and online through GoWallet
• Conveniently manage multiple gift cards in one place

For more information about Gift Card Mall, visit www.giftcardmall.com.

For more information about GoWallet, visit www.gowallet.com.

To learn more about Blackhawk Network, visit www.blackhawknetwork.com.

About Blackhawk Network

Blackhawk Network Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: HAWK and HAWKB) is a leading prepaid and payments global company, which supports the program management and distribution of gift cards, prepaid telecom products and financial service products in a number of different retail, digital and incentive channels. Blackhawk's digital platform supports prepaid across a network of digital distribution partners including retailers, financial service providers, and mobile wallets. For more information please, visit www.blackhawknetwork.com and www.giftcardmall.com.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements are indicated by words or phrases such as "guidance," "believes," "expects," "will," "anticipates," "estimates," "plans," "continuing," "ongoing," and similar words or phrases and the negative of such words and phrases. Forward-looking statements are based on our current plans and expectations and involve risks and uncertainties which are, in many instances, beyond our control, and which could cause actual results to differ materially from those included in or contemplated or implied by the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include the following: the consequences should a consumer's smart phone prove unable to operate the application; our ability to develop and deliver additional cash-out options in connection with the application; our ability to grow at historic rates or at all, the consequences should we lose one or more of our top distribution partners or fail to attract new distribution partners to our network or if the financial performance of our distribution partners' businesses decline, our reliance on our content providers and the demand for their products, our reliance on relationships with card issuing banks, the consequences to our future growth if our distribution partners fail to actively and effectively promote our products and services, the requirement that we comply with applicable laws and regulations, the requirement that we comply with increasingly stringent money-laundering rules and regulations, reputational harm that could be caused by abuse of our prepaid products, failure to comply with, or further expansion of, consumer protection regulations,  fluctuations in our financial results from quarter to quarter, season fluctuations in our business, any decline in the attractiveness of gift cards to consumers, our ability to increase our revenues from prepaid products or services, including GPR cards, declines in consumer confidence, any interruption in the efficient operation of our transaction processing systems, any data security breach, litigation, investigations or regulatory examinations, fraudulent or other illegal activity involving our products and services, any inability to operate and scale our technology, our failure to keep pace with the rapid technological developments in our industry and the greater electronic payments industry, changes in the telecom industry, assertions by third parties of infringement by us, our distribution partners or our content providers, settlement risk from retailers that sell our products and services, disruption caused by replacing any third party vendor, future acquisitions or investments, our ability to attract and retain key personnel and risks related to our international operations. We undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect developments or information obtained after the date hereof and disclaim any obligation to do so. Please refer to our reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the risks and uncertainties set forth in Item 1A under the heading Risk Factors in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and other subsequent periodic reports we have filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission

SOURCE Blackhawk Network, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.blackhawknetwork.com