According to a report the other day, it was revealed that Starbucks had plans to expand the functionality of its mobile app by letting customers pre-order their drinks. However it seems that Starbucks’ plan for their mobile app is not stopping there, nor will it be limited to it being used at just Starbucks outlets. Speaking to the folks at Re/code, Starbucks’ chief digital officer, Adam Brotman, revealed that Starbucks is currently in talks with potential partners about using the Starbucks app to act as a form of mobile payment. What this means is that not only can your Starbucks app be used to purchase coffee and other merchandise at Starbucks outlets, but it could also be used to purchase non-Starbucks related goods at other stores.
A decade after the idea was first sketched on the proverbial drawing board, Starbucks is poised to finally let its customers order their coffees from their phones. And the company’s plans for building on its wildly successful mobile app don’t stop there. The Seattle-based coffee giant, which said in March that more than 14 percent of purchases in its U.S. stores are paid for through its app, will allow customers in one undisclosed geographic test market to start placing pickup orders from the Starbucks app later this year, according to the company’s Chief Digital Officer Adam Brotman. This should not be confused as an experiment, Brotman made clear. Starbucks is determined to eventually roll out the technology nationwide, no matter how long it takes. “We will do this and we will get it right,” Brotman told Re/code in an interview following his onstage appearance on Wednesday morning at Fortune magazine’s technology conference in Aspen, Colorado. The initiative comes at a time when Americans are increasingly turning to apps on their phones to order products and services to be picked up or brought to them. Cab-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft have taken major cities by storm, while food chains like Chipotle enjoy high usage for their order-ahead feature. Then there are apps from companies such as GrubHub, Tapingo and Square that allow people to order food and beverages from a variety of different smaller food and drink establishments. Purchases made in Starbucks stores with credit or debit cards run through Square’s payments platform, but transactions in Starbucks’ app do not.
