gift card

An online payment system eBillme has partnered with CashStar for eGift cards. Now CashStar can offer a new gift card channel to retailers through eBillme by offering cash payments online.

One of the largest loyalty programs Citi® ThankYou® Rewards is expanding its rewards collection with the introduction of gift cards and exclusive virtual products from Zynga, the world’s largest social game developer.

Zynga is producing a line of exclusive items available only to Citi ThankYou Rewards members, starting at just 600 ThankYou Points. Members can redeem for both physical and virtual gift cards to enhance their gaming experience across popular games like FarmVille, FrontierVille and Café World.

The digital gifting and incentives company CashStar announced that the office products firm Staples Inc is implementing the CashStar digital gifting platform to power its new eGift card offering and enhance the customer service experience.

“Staples strives to make buying office products easy, and our digital gift card program is no exception,” said Allison Ledoux, Senior Manager, Staples Gift Cards. “With CashStar’s platform, we can provide a convenient and highly personalized gift card option for our customers.”

Business Solutions, a subsidiary of the American Bankers Association, is implementing a new program to allow community banks to offer their consumers a wide range of Prepaid MasterCard card products, including general purpose reloadable, payroll and gift cards.

Online payment provider eBillme has struck a deal with ACI Gift Cards, Inc., the exclusive issuer of Amazon.com Gift Cards, to provide consumers a cash method for purchasing Amazon.com Gift Cards through their online banking/bill payment provider.

Wells Fargo & Company (WFC) enhanced its Wells Fargo Visa® Gift Cards and Wachovia Visa® Gift Cards by eliminating monthly service fees with the expiration of funds.

Facebook will be offering gift cards preloaded with Credits at retail stores across the United States. The first to offer the cards will be the Target supermarket chain.

The Facebook gift cards will be sold in the values of $15, $25 and $50 at all of Target's 1750 retail stores and at Target.com. The gift cards on display at Target were created by GMG Entertainment which also produces Apple's iTunes cards.

A worldwide gift card distribution network Blackhawk Network has launched a new brand of prepaid products called PayPower.

PayPower enables consumers to control their spending with simple and convenient solutions that feature value, transparency, security and budgeting.

The new suit of prepaid products and services targets consumers who search for alternatives to traditional financial credit, whether for everyday use, travel, online purchases or simply to pay a bill.

Firethorn, a subsidiary of Qualcomm, announced that American Apparel has subscribed to its upcoming SWAGG mobile service. SWAGG was developed by Firethorn to allow customers to purchase, personalize and exchange gift cards directly from a mobile device. SWAGG will also provide consumers mobile access to account information, special offers and loyalty programs.

While Visa or MasterCard branded prepaid cards are gaining some popularity among consumers, most interest is shown only in prepaid gift cards, says Auriemma Consulting Group (ACG) in its Cardbeat® syndicated market research report. The Cardbeat survey revealed that 42% of consumers had received a network-branded (or open-loop) gift card, compared to 67% who had received a store-specific card.

Customers now can convert their unused gift card money into virtual currency units at thousands of top online games. Plastic Jungle and Offerpal Media have partnered to allow exchange gift cards for purchasing power within online games, virtual worlds and social networks, tapping the estimated $30 billion unredeemed gift card economy.

Over the past several months fake fan pages have popped up all over Facebook website where the members are offered too-good-to-be-true gift cards. There's the $500 Whole Foods card, the $10 Walmart offer, and the $1,000 Ikea gift card. The Ikea page put these gift card scams on the map last month, when it quickly racked up more than 70,000 fans before being snuffed. Facebook has also taken down Target and iTunes gift card scam pages in the past few months.

GiftCards.com is now offering Print on Demand production for Prepaid MasterCard® cards to its corporate clients. Apart from the customized prepaid cards, the company is also offering customizable greeting cards for corporate customers to use when giving the product to recipients.

MasterCard Worldwide has established a brand-exclusive partnership with Plastic Cash International, LLC for MYPLASH open-loop prepaid gift cards and reloadable prepaid gift cards starting summer 2010. Previously, MYPLASH prepaid cards, Plastic Cash International's teen prepaid brand, were co-branded with Visa. They are the world's largest teen branded prepaid product.

Transaction Wireless (TW), a mobile infrastructure, commerce and marketing company, has established a relationship with Fifth Third Processing Solutions, a provider of secure electronic payments and credit, debit and gift card processing services, under the terms of which Fifth Third Processing Solutions will begin to offer TW’s virtual gift card solutions to its leading merchant partners, using their wGiftCard suite of products.