Starbucks has reached 42 million payments processed using its mobile payment app, Venture Beat reported yesterday. That impressive factoid is courtesy of Adam Brotman, Starbucks' chief digital officer. That's up from 26 million transactions just four months ago.
Even more revealing are Brotman's comments about future plans for mobile payments at the coffee company.
"You’re going to see us as a company that will push the envelope around mobile pay," Brotman told Venture Beat. “We want to innovate in that area before others catch up.”
Brotman said company CEO Howard Schultz saw a "seismic shift" in the way Starbucks interacts with its customers through digital and has made digital channels a priority at the company.
In other words, Starbucks doesn't see mobile payments as a gimmick but as a fundamental part of its customer strategy. (Venture Beat said it's one of 10 "core digital businesses" under its digital strategy umbrella.)
The only quibble we have with the Venture Beat article would be its description of the Starbucks app as "novel" and "new." Launched in January 2011, the app lost both its novelty and its newness right about the time it hit 1 million transactions, which would have been about a month after it launched.
For our complete coverage of Starbucks' mobile payments, click here.
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