Starbucks Launches Mobile Payments

It's all happening in the world of Mobile Marketing.  Hot on the heels of several US supermarket chains launching location based mobile loyalty programs (see my previous blog entry), coffee giant Starbucks has launched a mobile payment services across it's 6,000+ US stores.  The new service allows customers with smartphones (iPhone and Blackberry initially) to download an app that can be "charged" up with cash or loyalty credits and then used to make purchases in store.  A counter-top scanner will read the barcode displayed on the phone's screen and instruct the EPOS till to deduct the value of the voucher from the transaction total.  Starbucks hope this will eventually replace their pre-paid loyalty card system which has seen some $1.5bn worth of 'credits' loaded up on to them over the last year, a CAGR of 21%.  One in five transactions in a US store is via the Starbucks card, with many people disliking having to carry yet another card, Starbucks could be on to a winner as 70% of their customer base have a smartphone.

 
Mobile marketing is going mainstream and we can all sit back and proudly say we were there at the beginning...