How do you feel about being named a finalist in the 2010 Tech Awards? We are excited to be named a MITX finalist and are pleased to have our innovative Consumer eGift Application acknowledged by the New England technology community.

Our highly flexible and customizable technology platform is changing the face of digital gifting and incentives by providing retailers the ability to offer customers the convenience of buying and emailing secure, highly personalized bar-coded eGift Cards that can be used online or in-store. Built from the ground up to meet the needs of retailers, our fully hosted solution enables them to get to market quickly and drive immediate results. CashStar is revolutionizing the digital gifting experience for hundreds of thousands of consumers and dozens of top retailer brands.

If you could describe your innovation in one succinct sentence, how would you describe yourself?

CashStar’s Consumer eGift Application delivers retailers incremental, high-margin sales, provides them with the ability to easily track, manage and analyze sales and promotions, and encourages customer loyalty by providing consumers with the most personal, compelling and convenient gifting experiences.

How was your company founded, and what inspired its creation? Having “grown up” at American Express, CashStar CEO and co-founder David Stone was the creator of the first universal prepaid product, the American Express Gift Cheque (which quickly grew to sales in excess of $300 million). Just prior to CashStar, he worked with Intel Capital's Mobile Commerce team in identifying new applications for mobile and digital couponing.

Combining all of this experience, David created CashStar to provide the industry’s first digital gifting and incentives platform that enables a retailer’s customer base to email personalized gift cards.

How was your company founded, and what inspired its creation? (continued) CashStar was incubated by Coupons, Inc., the leading U.S. provider of consumer-printed coupon marketing and technology solutions and experts in print-at-home financial media. CashStar leverages Coupons, Inc.’s secure print barcode technology foundation to provide a secure payment technology platform. Both companies connect the digital and physical worlds through print-at-home solutions.

Under David’s leadership the company has effectively transformed print-at-home financial media and is on pace to continue revolutionizing the industry by delivering new and innovative digital gifting and payments solutions to the market. CashStar provides the preferred digital gifting and incentives platform for top brands like CVS, The Home Depot and The Container Store, and is creating a new category of print-on-demand media with its digital gift card and incentive solutions.

What makes your company different from other companies in your market space?

CashStar is the only truly digital gifting and incentive company for leading brands with a proven SaaS platform that provides a richer personal online experience for both the purchaser and the recipient. With expertise in secure online transaction management and a robust platform, CashStar is able to provide the highest levels of service and marketing innovation so that its clients can delight and reward their customers.

What makes your company different from other companies in your market space? (continued)

CashStar’s patent pending risk mitigation application is unmatched. CashStar is the only company that has the ability to mitigate risk and assume the fraud liability for eGift card purchases (which is typically what destroys the economic value on most eGift Card programs). CashStar’s secure fraud management and detection processes provide additional layers of protection to safeguard the interests of the retailer and their customers. Our state-of-the-art application and logic evaluates thousands of different characteristics of an order (including multiple third party fraud detection services) to produce a single, unified fraud score that represents the odds that an order is fraudulent based on actual transactions. The algorithm evolves over time, becoming a better predictor with every transaction the company processes.

What makes your company different from other companies in your market space? (continued)

CashStar’s platform also provides the industry’s only offer and promotions management solution that enables retailers to layer promotions onto every gift card transaction, in effect driving two high value purchases from every sale. Retailers can create new GOGO™ (Give One Get One) offers, coupon offers, vouchers and other value-adds all tied to, or embedded in, the eGift card’s offering.

What makes your company different from other companies in your market space? (continued)

Finally, CashStar’s platform can be extended to solve other key challenges for retailers. For example, the recently introduced eSatisfaction and eWarranty services from CashStar enable retailers to leverage eGift cards to instantly satisfy customer complaints and resolve extended warranty claims.

What has been your company's greatest accomplishment in the past year?

CashStar’s greatest accomplishment in the past year has been signing 54 retail brands, including three of the top 20 US Retailers (The Home Depot, Staples and CVS), as well as major restaurant brands: Brinker International, which includes the second largest casual dining chain, Chili’s, Maggiano’s and On The Border, and Landry’s Restaurants, which includes Chart House, Rainforest Café and Simms Steakhouse.

What is your greatest asset?

CashStar’s greatest asset is its people, who are passionate about and committed to developing the most advanced technology that provides a simple, elegant design and a compelling user experience.