Starbucks is killing it with mobile payments. The coffee chain can’t and don’t want to wait for the promises of NFC-based contactless payments and is using its own mobile app instead to make things happen. And its customers obviously love the idea, with some 26 million transactions conducted since the service launched nearly a year ago.
At the moment, coffee drinkers can pay for their drink (and snacks presuming they fancy so) at more than 9,000 U.S. locations, with more locations coming next year. Heck, the plan is to expand to the UK on January 25th and test whether Brits too are willing to get their caffeine fix without pulling any cash from their wallets.
During the first 9 weeks of Starbucks’ mobile payments program, there were 3 million transactions. In comparison, for the 9-week period starting in October, there were 6 million transactions, demonstrating a significant jump in customer adoption and use. Obviously this is just a start and Starbucks is all set to make even more users pay for their coffee using nothing but their smartphone in 2012…