Just about one year ago, Starbucks decided to put together and launch a mobile payment app for consumers that were buying coffee in their stores. According to the company, they have processed over 26 million payment transactions made via smartphones since the launch day. That would mean that Starbucks currently has the largest mobile payment program in the United States. The popular payment option has been launched in Canada recently and will be launched in the United Kingdom by January of 2012. Back in January of 2011, the company launched its bar code based mobile payment option for BlackBerry and iPhone users and then launched the Android based version sometime in June.
Other companies like movie theaters are using a similar bar code based app to help consumers get through lines faster. Basically, when a customer makes a coffee purchase the app displays a bar code on their smartphone that can be scanned when they get to the register. The bar code is linked to a Starbucks Card that a consumer loads with any credit card or other account that is setup initially. At first glance it might have looked like the company is not accepting of the near field communication technology that is popular for other mobile payment options on the market.
When asked about NFC and why the company was not using it, a spokesman for Starbucks said that NFC chips and technology was not widely available at the time the company wanted to start the program so the bar code based program was the company’s preference for now. The exact numbers were not made public by the company but they did say that over 3 million transactions happened in the first month and that number doubled by the start of October of this year.
The exact amount of those purchases was also kept secret by the company but they did say that $110 million was reloaded onto the Starbucks Cards through the app since January. Throughout the world, over $2.4 billion was loaded onto the cards in the 2011 fiscal year. Of all the transactions, the Starbucks Cards make up one in every four of them and since the cards were launched about 10 years ago, over $10 billion has been loaded on to them. Over 9,000 Starbucks stores accept the mobile payment option.
