PORTLAND, Maine--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CashStar, the industry-leading provider in prepaid commerce solutions, today announced record revenues and more than $1 billion in gross merchant load for 2015. CashStar’s robust growth rate accelerated in 2015, driven by new client and partner programs, product and platform innovations, and increased consumer adoption. The company also raised $15 million in growth capital in 2015, bringing the total capital raised to $50 million and fueling product development, client success and company expansion. On April 6, CashStar will kick off its sixth annual client conference, CashStar Innovate in Scottsdale, AZ.
“Our commitment to client success and product innovation has led to tremendous growth over the past several years,” said CashStar President and CEO Ben Kaplan. “Our record-setting results and accelerating growth rate not only reflects this ongoing focus, but also the incredible momentum that CashStar and its clients have achieved in the market. We look forward to building on this success, extending our leadership and realizing our vision for prepaid commerce.”
New Solutions and Product Innovation
CashStar made major investments across its best-in-class prepaid commerce platform, CashStar Commerce. New features brought innovative, revenue-generating capabilities, as well as greater efficiency, security and scale for merchants and distribution partners.
- CashStar Consumer enhancements included a wide range of new capabilities, such as private label credit card acceptance and in-app mobile plastic gift card purchase experiences. Merchants also gained more UX integration flexibility and optimization capabilities, including iframe deployment options and integrated site tracking capabilities with support for Google Tag Manager.
- Merchants and their business clients gained important new functionality in CashStar Business including configurable order approval process management and messaging creation and messaging options for B2B clients.
- CashStar merchants continue to see incredible ROI on gift card-based marketing promotions powered by CashStar Marketing. Recent enhancements include on-demand distribution and on-demand activation, which provide merchant speed, flexibility and control for new marketing promotions and distribution programs.
- CashStar also added powerful new capabilities into the CashStar Commerce Platform to enhance partner integration, scalability, risk management and security. In addition, new cross-platform enhancements included regifting capabilities, prepaid funds management, enhanced single sign-on framework, and expanded processor integration capabilities.
Client Growth
In 2015, the company significantly increased its impressive roster of brands and expanded business relationships with several existing clients, including:
- CashStar signed 30 new client programs across CashStar’s Consumer, Business, Marketing and Assist applications, spanning both digital and plastic capabilities.
- Notable new client launches included Nordstrom, Ikea and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
- CashStar’s unified consumer e-commerce experience for digital and plastic gift cards is being rapidly implemented with many existing clients, including Dell adding plastic purchasing to its program.
- Consumer sales growth was also driven by expanded use of the CashStar Marketing platform to market and engage customers with innovative gift-card based promotions.
Partner Expansion
In 2015, CashStar saw record-setting sales in its B2B distribution network, CashStar Exchange. Growth was driven by significant expansion of existing partner programs, the addition of new partners, and increased participation by merchant brands across partner programs.
- More than 100 partner programs now rely on CashStar Exchange to power digital gift card distribution.
- CashStar and Maritz Motivation Solutions announced a strategic partnership and launched expanded digital gift card distribution with many Maritz clients.
- CashStar established new and expanded relationships with United MileagePlus X and Ebates, and also entered into a strategic partnership with one of the world’s largest credit card issuers.
- CashStar Exchange now offers approximately 300 brands for B2B distribution. New brands now available include Hyatt Hotels, Lord & Taylor, Royal Caribbean International, Darden Restaurants (including Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse) and California Pizza Kitchen.
Industry Recognition and Awards
2014 was a banner year for awards at CashStar and 2015 continued that trend. The company was recognized for its leadership in innovation by industry experts.
- For the second consecutive year, CashStar was named to the 2015 AlwaysOn Global 250 list. CashStar was featured in the Marketplaces and E-Commerce category and was joined by other prominent private technology companies.
- CashStar, with its client The Cheesecake Factory, won a Circle of Excellence Award for Best Consumer Offer, Branding and Customer Loyalty Program from The Incentive Marketing Association (IMA).
- Paybefore, the leading information provider to prepaid, mobile and emerging payments industry professionals, selected CashStar Commerce as a 2015 Paybefore Awards winner in the Outstanding White-Label Platform category.
- CashStar won the silver PYMNTS Innovator Award for Best Prepaid Solution. The PYMNTS Innovator Awards are viewed as one of the most prestigious awards in the payments industry.
Employee Investment and Growth
In 2015, CashStar continued to foster a collaborative work environment and aggressively hire across the company, including key additions to the executive team.
- Katherine Edenbach joined CashStar as vice president of finance. Prior to joining CashStar, Edenbach served as director of corporate financial planning and analysis at WEX Inc.
- Martin Hood joined the company as vice president of channel partnerships. Hood was most recently at Blackhawk Network, where he was vice president of partnership sales for Blackhawk Engagement Solutions.
- Matthew Kerper joined CashStar as vice president of strategic business development. Prior to CashStar, Kerper led business development for eBay’s gift card in retail, B2B and online channels.
- In February 2015, CashStar promoted Gerry Gilbert to vice president of product. Prior to joining CashStar, Gilbert led teams building merchant focused self-service and CRM solutions at Intuit’s Payments Solution Division.
- For the fifth consecutive year, CashStar was recognized as one of the Best Places to Work in Maine.
- Earlier this year the company opened a Boston-area office to complement its Portland headquarters and support its rapid growth.
About CashStar
CashStar, the industry-leading provider of prepaid commerce solutions, enables the world’s top retailers and restaurants to grow and innovate in the rapidly evolving retail environment. CashStar provides best-in-class capabilities, revenue-optimizing risk management and a client success model based on aligned growth, to optimize digital gifting and prepaid commerce experiences. CashStar powers more than 300 leading brands worldwide including Best Buy, Brookstone, Coach, Crate & Barrel, Dell, Dunkin’ Donuts, Gap, lululemon athletica, Nine West, Office Depot, Petco, Pottery Barn, QVC, Sephora, Staples, Starbucks, The Cheesecake Factory, The Home Depot, Ulta Beauty and Williams-Sonoma. To learn more, please visit www.cashstar.com, follow @CashStar or e-mail info@cashstar.com.
