Square Wallet Launches in 7k Starbucks Stores

When Starbucks invested a whooping $25 million in Square, a mobile payment solutions provider, and charging it with the responsibility of ensuring that Starbucks’ customers could use Square’s apps to make payments in stores, there was a lot of skepticism about whether the idea would pick up.

By launching in 7,000 Starbucks stores on November8, 2012, Square has become one of the early services into the mobile payments race.

Lucky customers who already have Square’s Wallet app on their iOS or Android (News - Alert) smartphones can now buy coffee by scanning the generated barcode to a Starbucks cash register for billing. In a bid to support the idea of cashless transactions, Square will also be processing regular credit and debit card transactions, effectively doing away with the age of having to carry and swipe your card at the pay point.

The full integration of Square Wallet into Starbucks allows users to pay and explore surrounding businesses, browse menu information, store hours and transaction history on their smartphones. The Square solution will work closely with Starbucks’ mobile payment solutions already deployed on Apple (News - Alert) gadgets and Android smartphones.

Starbuck’s iOS and android apps are used over two million times each week and integrate with other Starbucks offerings – the Starbucks Card and the My Starbucks Rewards program.

Customers using Square will be able to discover neighborhood businesses near their Starbucks store using the Square directory by going to the Starbucks Digital Network.

Commenting on the already working partnership, William Henderson, Square Wallet director said, “We’re excited to work with Starbucks to introduce a broad new group of people to the benefits of using Square.”

Analysts, technologists, journalists and large companies have been predicting that in the near future, our phones will be our wallets, and probably our banking companions. At this rate, we have all the reasons to believe the prediction will happen sooner.