Blackhawk Network announced today the acquisition of Cashstar, a venture-capital based private company, for $175M in cash. Cashstar was founded in 2008.
Blackhawk Network is the name behind Giftcardmall.com. The company incorporated in 2006, went public in 2013 (NASDAQ: HAWK), and has a current market cap of $2.5 billion. Blackhawk continues to swallow up competition as well as expand with their acquisition of Cardpool, Giftcards.com, now Cashstar, and a bunch of others.
Giftcardmall already offered some digital gift cards for sale, but obviously Cashstar is the big name for digital gift card offerings and it made sense for them to acquire. I expect that we’ll see many more brands available as e-gift cards on Giftcardmall.com. That’s good news since Giftcardmall is available on shopping portals while CashStar is not. On the other hand, Cashstar has some advantages for purposes of credit card category bonuses, as discussed in this dedicated post, while Giftcardmall generally codes as a generic purchase.
For now, the Cashstar name will remain, though that can change in the future based on strategic goals.
