All the recent excitement in mobile payments may be over Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, but Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz put it rather starkly on an earnings call late in 2014: 90% of mobile payments in 2013 took place using the Starbucks mobile app.
Wow.
With mobile payments numbers elsewhere continuing to underwhelm, this number is likely to be nearly the same today. The coffee giant offers a clear value proposition that Apple and Samsung don’t — buy 10 coffees, get one free. That’s a pretty strong reason to use the app. Other mobile payments services are generally used just for the heck of it.
Starbucks counts 12 million active users of its app. The company announced in January that it sees 7 million mobile transactions a week, accounting for more than 15% of Starbucks’ total sales volume.
In December 2014 Starbucks began testing a mobile order-ahead product — essentially the same product Square, which has had trouble connecting with consumers, announced recently that it would shutter on March 20. Starbucks is taking its version nationwide this year, and something tells us it will work out just fine.
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