Hawk Incentives, a Blackhawk Network business that provides rewards and incentive solutions, today announced its new open-loop Mastercard prepaid cards that can be added to major mobile wallets.
Leveraging Blackhawk’s Digital Pass™ technology, wallet-enabled Mastercard prepaid cards for promotions and incentives are exclusively available to Hawk Incentives customers. Blackhawk’s Digital Pass technology also enables marketers to connect loyalty programs, gift cards and other offers to mobile wallets, helping to advance the wallets beyond simple payment tools to platforms for far-reaching customer engagement.
“The ability to connect your incentive or promotional reward to a wallet is a game-changing innovation,” said Theresa McEndree, vice president of marketing, Hawk Incentives. “With our Digital Pass technology, we enable our clients to extend brand engagement with their mobile-minded consumers. Additionally, our virtual Mastercard combines great options in a single reward: recipients can pick an online or physical reward and can store, manage and make payments with the reward using their mobile wallet. This flexibility helps our partners to deliver the right rewards to the right recipients.”
By increasing the mobility of rewards, brands can maintain relevance with their consumers and deliver a better overall promotional experience. Also, by integrating rewards and loyalty programs into major mobile wallets, brands have the opportunity to reach a larger audience of users and promote their own payments or retail apps.
“We are excited to introduce this market-first capability that helps our clients expand the ways branded value engages their end users,” said Talbott Roche, chief executive officer and president, Blackhawk Network. “Mobile devices are an integral part of consumers’ lives and they have high expectations for the mobile brand experience. Shoppers don’t just want to replace the function of a credit or debit card with a mobile wallet; they want the ability to incorporate all of their loyalty cards, promotions, rewards and offers in one mobile location. We developed our Digital Pass technology to respond to this consumer demand and create better sales and marketing potential for our partners.”