Whether you use an iPhone, iPod touch or BlackBerry smartphone, you can now forget the cash and instead use your trusty gadget to buy your cup of Joe. The Starbucks Card mobile app for BlackBerry and iOS is now being accepted in nearly 6,800 U.S. company-operated Starbuck stores. Is this the future of mobile payments?
Before we dive in, Android users just sit tight — Starbucks has assured us that a version of the Starbucks Card mobile app for Android is coming soon. Now that we’ve got that out of the way here’s the deal with Starbucks app. Following a very successful mobile payment test program, Starbucks went live with the new method of payment across 6,800 company-operated stores and more than 1,000 Starbucks in U.S. Target locations.
If you’re wondering why offer the app for iOS and BlackBerry and not Windows Phone 7 or Android, the answer is based on data mining. According to Starbucks, more than 33 percent of U.S. Starbucks customers use smart phones, of which 75 percent use either a BlackBerry or iPhone. While Android controls the lion share of U.S. smartphone market share, it appears those users are not quite as fond of Starbucks as the iOS and BlackBerry folks.
So how does the Starbucks Card mobile app work? Essentially you are simply taking the physical Starbucks Card you’d normally purchase and instead of carrying it around in your wallet, a digital copy (barcode) is used in its place. When you step up to the counter simply fire up the app and the employee working the register will scan the barcode. The whole system ties back into the Starbucks Card account so if your funds are running low, simply head to the website and reload the card with any major credit card — iPhone users can also pay via PayPal.
So that’s the skinny on the Starbucks Card mobile app. While this is not the NFC solution we were hoping to see, largely because there’s very few devices with native NFC support, mobile payments are a step in the right direction. In the U.S. this remains a relatively new opportunity, so I ask that you cut us some slack. If you happen to give the app a go, feel free to drop us a line and let us know how the experience worked out for you.
Out Now | Free | Starbucks
