Starbucks adds digital tipping to mobile app

Coffee chain behemoth Starbucks has revamped its iPhone app to let customers tip baristas digitally and pay with a shake of their handsets.

The app upgrade will see visitors to around 7000 of Starbucks' 11,000 US stores given the option to tip either $0.50, $1.00 or $2.00 when they pay with their phone. Tipping will be added to the Android app later this year.

Another new feature aims to make the mobile payment process easier by letting users shake their phone to bring the barcode of their Starbucks card front and centre of the app, saving them the hassle of swiping through pages of menus.

Starbucks has pioneered m-payments and now claims 10 million customers for its app, with 11% of transactions going through mobile devices. As well as its own hugely popular offering, the firm has a partnership with, and has invested in, Square.

Adam Brotman, chief digital officer, Starbucks, says: "This update to the Starbucks App for iPhone is an important next step in digital innovation at Starbucks and one of the many ways we'll expand and improve our digital experience in the months to come."

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Retail banking Payments

Keywords

Mobile & online banking Eftpos

Comments: (1)

A Finextra member 12 March, 2014, 16:43

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Starbucks leads the way no doubt in terms of transaction volume. They are the perfect case study illustrating how consumers, given the right incentives along with a business (saving money on every single transaction) embrace using their mobile phone technology for payments. By off railing from the card schemes, Starbucks save a considerable chunk of change every single year.

In terms of this latest announcement, sounds great, but does anyone actually tip a barista at Starbucks? Maybe in the US, but here in the UK I have never seen nor heard of anyone tipping in Starbucks.