Monitise plc, the publicly traded mobile payments company, will roll out gift cards to users of its mobile banking apps next quarter, a senior company official told Bank Innovation.

The roll out comes more than a year after the company first announced a partnership with Blackhawk Network Inc., which would make the gift cards available to users of Monitise mobile banking systems. It was not clear why it will have taken so long to implement the gift card integration.

Starting next quarter, users of Monitise — there are more than 30 million of them worldwide today — will have the opportunity to view images of gift cards from merchants. Users can then decide how much they want to load on the card, whether they want to keep it, or whether they want to gift it. The cards can be used digitally or in a retail store. All reloading for the gift cards are done through digital balance transfer. Blackhawk handles the network of retailers.

Monitise, Blackhawk and the issuer banks share the gift card fees.

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Monitise is reporting that demand for its Clairmail SMS product, now known as Alerting+, has increased in recent months. Why? Because financial institutions are finding a new need for SMS communication to address the recent credit card breaches, a company official said. It seems FIs’ fraud losses are Monitise’s gains.

Monitise acquired Clairmail in 2012 for about $173 million. Monitise has a market capitalization of about $1.5 billion.