Prepaid and financial payments products provider Blackhawk Network has expanded its Digital Content category to make prepaid cards for online entertainment available at more than 10,000 Gift Card Mall locations (e.g. Safeway, Sears, Kmart) across North America.

The company's digital card partners allow consumers to make purchases at a wide range of online destinations including virtual worlds, MMOs, social networks, casual games, and digital music sites. With the cards, users can buy virtual goods, subscriptions game tokens, and more. Earlier this month, Blackhawk announced a partnership with Microsoft to sell Xbox Live prepaid cards.

Based in Pleasonton, California, Blackhawk has offices in the U.S., Australia, Canda, France, Japan, Mexico, and the UK. Its Gift Card Mall reaches more than 165 million people each week through its network of grocery, big box, convenience, drug, and specialty stores, and its products are also available through Internet retailers.

"By expanding our digital brands into our grocer and retail alliance partners, we're giving consumers more options in purchasing our prepaid cards as a gift or for their own individual use such as budgeting," says Blackhawk Network's SVP and co-founder Talbott Roche.

She adds, "Our alliance partners have always had a strong footprint when it comes to successfully marketing and selling prepaid cards and we thought it was a natural extension of our business to expand into the gaming and entertainment sector."