Blackhawk Partners with German Bank on Digital Gifting (Jan. 21, 2015)
Retailo GmbH—the German subsidiary of Blackhawk Network—has struck a deal with Berlin-based Deutsche Kreditbank AG (DKB) to offer digital gift cards to the bank’s customers. Under the agreement, DKB accountholders can purchase cards for Facebook, Nintendo eShop and Spotify, which are then delivered digitally to the recipient. The card value is automatically deducted from the purchaser’s online bank account.
DKB said the decision to offer digital gift cards was based partially on the bank’s positive experience with offering digital prepaid cards for mobile phone top-up. “By offering digital gift cards, we are taking a step further toward e-commerce,” said Tilo Hacke, board member for private customers, DKB. “We are going to expand these services in the near future and expect Retailo to grow alongside us.” For Blackhawk, the deal expands the company’s footprint in the German market; DKB is the country’s second-largest online bank. Blackhawk acquired gift card distributor Retailo in late 2013.
Blackhawk has been active on the digital gift card front—an area the company believes is expanding opportunities rather than cannibalizing plastic card sales. Last year, the company partnered with Canadian telecom provider Rogers Communications to open Blackhawk’s digital gifting platform to users of Rogers’s mobile wallet. That deal followed the 2013 announcement that Blackhawk digital gift cards would become available through the PayPal mobile app.
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