With stats like this, who needs NFC? I’m sure that’s what the executives at Starbucks are thinking as they announce the company has processed 42 million mobile payments since its US launch in January 2011. The service was expanded in November to include Canada and the UK, which have surely added quite a few of those (there is no breakdown by country, unfortunately).
In December, Starbucks announced that a quarter of payments in store were from a mobile device, and that they had reached 20 million overall app payments. In the last four months they have doubled that number, an astounding figure in the world of nascent mobile payment systems like Square, and the burgeoning NFC market.
Although users in the US can use both the official iOS and Android apps to pay for drinks, only the former is available in Canada. Android users, however, can use third-party solutions like My Coffee Card to get the job done. Starbucks also recently launched its free weekly app promotion in Canada, to great success.
Source: VentureBeat
Via: TheVerge
