Starphones? Cellbucks?

After two years of trial service, Starbucks is implementing a new payment option. In an effort to expedite service, Starbucks will now begin offering mobile payment options in all their locations. The new payment option will allow customers to download an application on participating cell phones. Customers with Blackberry, Iphone, or Ipod Touches will be able to download a bar code onto their phones. After placing an order, customers pull up their bar code on their phone and allow the cashier to scan it. This scan will be deducted from a credit established by the customer online. Starbucks believes this new payment option will be highly successful thanks to cell phone dependence. As vice president Brady Brewer put it, “everyone always carries their cell phone.”

It is obvious cell phones have become a staple in our society, very rarely leaving our hands. This concept prompted the idea that switching payment methods from a credit card to a cell phone would improve productivity. After nearly two years of testing the mobile payment out, Starbucks thinkers proved themselves right. Customers would rather spend the extra minutes online adding the application, and linking it to a credit card, than spend the extra seconds on line taking out a credit card. The new mobile payment system supersedes gift cards, and will be only a matter of time until other companies install like systems in their locations.

The increase of cell phone dependence that will follow this new system makes me think Starbucks engineers may have bought stock in Apple.