Starbucks Customers Make 5 Million Mobile Payments a Week
Starbucks reports that nearly 10 million customers make mobile payments, and average nearly 5 million payments a week. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says mobile and physical Starbucks Card payments currently comprise more than 30 percent of the company’s U.S. payments, due to an uptick in gift card use in the recent holiday season. Schultz notes the numbers reflect an an 11 percent boost in mobile payments volume over the past eight months. In May, Starbucks disclosed that customers were making 4.5 million weekly mobile payments. Schultz says that over the past quarter, Starbucks activated more than 40 million new Starbucks Cards, valued at more than $610 million in the U.S. and Canada. In the run-up to Christmas, the company activated more than 2 million new cards daily and handled $1.4 billion in loads globally during the quarter. Schultz says Starbucks is “one of the very few consumer brands” to gain an advantage from a change in gift-giving habits that now favors online purchases and gift cards. Starbucks also started offering gift cards in China earlier in January, and Schultz says initial sales are “far in excess of our plan, and in many ways mirroring our U.S. experience.”
From “Starbucks: 10M Mobile Payments Users, Making 5M Payments a Week”
PaymentsSource (01/23/14) Wolfe, Daniel