Blackhawk Distributes Gift Cards To Health Workers In California

Payments provider Blackhawk Network is working with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services in order to facilitate speedy delivery of $25 million in necessary spending for healthcare professionals fighting the coronavirus, Blackhawk announced in a Tuesday (Aug. 18) press release.

The $25 million was donated by Facebook, and will go toward 50,000 prepaid cards from Blackhawk’s OmniCard portal, to help with childcare, transportation, lodging and other expenses essential healthcare workers encounter.

Recipients can redeem the cards online or in stores, the release says.

OmniCard.com from BlackHawk specializes in gift cards, in prepaid or digital form, used by nonprofits or governmental agencies in need of fast ways to distribute financial aid, the press announcement says. Order types can be turned around quickly, with digital cards delivered via email and physical ones sent through the mail.

The healthcare workers will likely need all the help they can get. PYMNTS reports that only around 25 percent of companies that needed workers onsite during the shutdown earlier this year offered hazard pay. Some hospitals were not among the businesses offering extra pay — though some of those hospitals couldn’t afford to do so due to revenue losses caused by the lack of elective surgeries.

And some workers who did receive hazard pay said it wasn’t enough, with one worker only receiving an extra $20 per shift on top of an $8.25 per hour salary.

Talbott Roche, CEO and president of Blackhawk Network, said the cards are a speedy form of assistance.

“Many organizations don’t realize how fast massive orders of prepaid and gift cards can be delivered — or that these cards are incredibly efficient tools for delivering assistance,” Roche said in the announcement. “This collaboration demonstrates the power of leveraging available resources and payments technologies and applying them to new use cases. For organizations like non-profits and government agencies, the precious time saved by circumventing the traditional process of issuing and printing paper checks is making an enormous difference.”