Kik has announced that Hawk Incentives, a company owned by Blackhawk Network, has joined its Kin ecosystem as a partner.

Hawk Incentives develops branded value rewards — such as gift cards, egifts, and ecodes — for corporates looking to incentivize participation. Hawk Incentives’ API will be integrated directly into Kin’s SDK, which will allow Kik’s digital services partners to provide Kin “spend” offers to users directly through their own applications.

In May 2017, Kik said it would build a Kin Rewards Engine to drive adoption of the cryptocurrency.

“Partnering with a major player like Hawk Incentives will help drive transaction activity with Kin,” Kin senior partnership manager Matthew Hibberd writes in a blog post. “The deal will equip digital services applications in the Kin ecosystem with data-driven access to hundreds of established gift card brands, which their users will access directly through their apps, through crypto.”

Digital service providers and app developers building with Kin can select up to five brands from Hawk Incentives that they expect will appeal to their users. Hawk Incentives’ API will then deliver predetermined $5 to $10 spending offers directly to the app, and users will be able to click an offer to receive an ecode, which they can redeem on the brand’s site.

Kik said that by limiting offers to $5 to $10, it will incentivize continual earning and spending among app users rather than hoarding kin.

“As we’ve said before, many apps that join the Kin Ecosystem will be more earn-driven than spend-driven,” Hibberd writes. “But in any healthy economy, people must be empowered to actually use the value they receive (not just acquire it).”

Kik announced the launch of Kin in May 2017 to create a transactional currency within Kik and build an ecosystem for developers and digital service providers. At the time, Kik said it would build a Kin Rewards Engine to promote Kin as a common currency. The company has also committed $12 million to improving user safety on the platform.

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