GiftCards.com
GiftCards.com is an online gift-card retailer based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company sells gift cards for thousands of different large corporate retailers and small businesses including Vanillagifts.com, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Sephora, Coach, Amazon.com, and others. The company also offers prepaid Visa and MasterCard gift cards. GiftCards.com is considered the largest online gift card retailer and has appeared on the Inc. 5000 list multiple times. The company is currently owned by Blackhawk Network Holdings after its purchase of the retailer in 2016
History
In 1999, GiftCards.com was founded by Jason Wolfe in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as DirectCertificate.com. In this early iteration, the company sold paper gift certificates for merchants instead of plastic gift cards. In 2003, Wolfe purchased the GiftCards.com domain name for $40,000. In 2006, Wolfe sold DirectCertificates.com to Minnesota-based, Digital River. He purchased the company back in 2007 and eventually rebranded it as GiftCards.com in 2008. By 2009, it had $44 million in sales.The company operates out of a suburban Pittsburgh facility that prints gift cards directly and sends them to clients. In 2010, GiftCards.com had 60 employees and had 100 employees by 2013. By 2014, the company had over $100 million in annual sales with 12 issued patents and 45 pending. It also entered into a partnership with CashStar, allowing them to sell gift cards for over 50 different retailers. In 2015, the company sold its 6 millionth gift card.
In 2016, Blackhawk Network Holdings announced the purchase of GiftCards.com. The purchase was confirmed by GiftCards.com in a press release, announcing the value of the purchase at $120 million.