Starbucks mobile payment introduced USA-wide

As if American coffee drinkers didn’t have enough beverage options – now they can make their Grande-Mocha-Frappucino mobile as well.

Coffee chain Starbucks introduced mobile payment options at all of their 6,800 USA stores yesterday. Thirsty customers can now use their Starbucks Card Mobile app to pay for their purchase by clicking “touch to pay” and swiping their phone over the 2-D scanner at the register. The app, available on iPhone, iPod and BlackBerry, also allows reward tracking and the addition or top-up of Starbucks Cards using PayPal or credit card. There is apparently an Android app in development also.

Starbucks testing has found that mobile is the fastest way for their customers to pay, and have foucssed investment on developing their own 2-D scanning technology due to customer requests for mobile payment, the high (20%) incidence of payment using Starbucks Cards and the observation that customers often used their smartphones as they were waiyting in line to pay.

The big question is, when will we see Starbucks introduce the mobile payment system down under?

via Mashable