Today, Starbucks, the self-proclaimed leader in mobile payment technologies, made a potentially industry altering announcement by investing $25 million into startup Square. For those of you not familiar with Square, this high technology start up created a simple square device that plugs into a mobile phone that allows anyone to take a credit or debit card payment. This device, in itself, can change payments as we know it, allowing Square owners to use them for everything from yard sales to Craig’s List sales.
From the Wall Street Journal, we understand that Starbucks plans to use Square’s existing service to allow customers in roughly 7,000 stores to pay by mobile phone or by simply stating their name to the barista. This will simply extend the Starbucks brand and continue their efforts to maintain their position as the worldwide leader in mobile payment transactions.
For some, this may be just a curiosity, a creative offering by a creative company. However, I believe this could be the beginning of full adoption of these sorts of technologies. Considering the typical adoption lifecycle, this innovation by Starbucks can lead to greater adoption of these technologies, primarily because of the size of their customer bas
It will definitely be interesting to see how, and if, this changes the world of mobile payment technologies, but one thing is for certain…Starbucks is on the bleeding edge.
