Last November, coffee drinkers across the United States gained the ability to purchase their Starbucks beverages and goodies using the Square Wallet application. The mobile payment option extended to all 7,000 Starbucks stores in operation.
“We look forward to continuing to create amazing connections with our customers – both in our stores and outside of our stores and offering our customers choices in how they want to pay,” said Adam Brotman, Starbucks chief digital officer.
But it now appears that Starbucks may have only scratched the surface in terms of entering the mobile fray. On Monday, Mobile Commerce Daily reported that the coffee giant “is looking at ways to expand the strategy, possibly into grocery stores.”
Revealing that mobile payments now account for 20 percent of overall card transactions, CEO Howard Schultz hinted at Starbucks possibly expanding the card’s reach within the areas of consumer packaged goods and grocery.
“Over the next few months or so, we’ll be coming back to you and sharing with you the plans that we have to take advantage of Starbucks products within CPG, and specifically grocery, and leveraging the technology and the advancement of providing value to our customers that are buying Starbucks products in grocery, and leveraging the card,” Schultz said during his company’s most recent conference call.
“I don’t want to get into too much specificity today, only to tell you that we strongly believe that this will provide an incentive for our customers to not only buy Starbucks coffee, but integrate them even further in the Starbucks ecosystem with the card loyalty and mobile,” he added.
Sounds like something bigger is brewing for mobile at Starbucks.
