One in ten purchases made in the coffee shops across the United States are made using smartphones.
According to the coffeehouse chain’s own statistics, which have just been released, mobile payments are now accounting for over ten percent of all transactions that are made within its American stores.
The purchases are being made over Android, iPhone, BlackBerry devices in the United States.
The Starbucks Card Mobile App allows customers in the coffee stores to be able to pay for their coffees and treats through the use of their smartphones with mobile payments based on barcode scans at the checkout. The chief financial officer at Starbucks, who is also the chief accounting officer, Troy Alstead, explained that this method of paying for products is “a very sticky transaction by virtue of the fact that people have preloaded their money that we hold for them in anticipation of that coming transaction.”
Alstead explained that mobile payments also provide the opportunity to gain an understanding of their customers.
He explained that by using mobile payments, it gives Starbucks “an ability for us to harvest that information and really determine the most effective ways over time to understand our customer to target products toward them and the appropriate ways to reach them with our messages.” He also noted that in total, the transactions made using the Starbucks Card – using both the mobile app and the actual plastic card – make up nearly a third of all of the purchases made in the United States.
Recently, the company said that the card is now making up approximately 4 million mobile payments transactions every week. This is twice the 2 million transactions that were occurring by the end of 2012 every week. Furthermore, the purchases made over the Starbucks Card Mobile App are now making up a much larger proportion of North American digital wallet transactions than their primary rivals, such as the high profile Isis and Google Wallet. This, according to data issued by Berg Insight earlier in June.
CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, has stated that the company will be boosting its m-commerce services throughout the year and that mobile payments are only expected to grow.
