Samsung Pay Adds Blackhawk Gift Cards (Oct. 27, 2015)
Blackhawk Network’s partner gift cards can now be integrated into Samsung Pay, enabling cardholders to manage and spend their gift cards through the mobile wallet. “We are thrilled to complement Samsung Pay’s groundbreaking mobile payment technology with the upcoming integration of gift cards into the application,” said Talbott Roche, president, Blackhawk Network, announcing the partnership today. “Consumers often have several gift cards at any given time, and the ability to integrate them into a single mobile payment solution . . . is expected to provide a value add to Samsung Pay users.”
The integration of Blackhawk partner gift cards adds another arrow to Samsung Pay’s quiver in its battle for market share in the mobile wallet space against Apple Pay, Android Pay and bank-provided m-payments services from Capital One and Chase. Four weeks after its launch, Samsung Pay is seeing some encouraging stats, with an average of eight transactions per user, according to data released today at Money20/20 in Las Vegas. Samsung Pay also plans to support for payment cards issued by more than a dozen banks, including Chase, PNC and TD Bank, Samsung said.
Blackhawk Network, for its part, has been steadily expanding its digital gifting distribution channels. The company considers digital gifts an opportunity for retailers to reach new groups of buyers, rather than cannibalizing traditional gift cards, and has struck digital gifting pacts with a number of partners, including banks, telecom providers and PayPal.
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