Starbucks Serves Up Mobile Payments at Another 6,800 Stores

Starbucks Corp.'s Grande-sized mobile payments trial has gone Venti.

The Seattle coffee chain on Wednesday said it has expanded its smartphone payment system to include about 6,800 company-operated stores after pilot testing the technology for more than a year.

The payment application, which works with Apple Inc.'s iPhone and iPod Touch and some Research In Motion Ltd. BlackBerry devices, lets users pay for purchases by displaying a bar code on their phone's screen at checkout. The cashier scans the bar code, deducting funds from the customer's prepaid Starbucks Card account.

Customers can manage their accounts using the same downloadable mobile app that generates the bar codes. Starbucks has said a perk of this system is it allows customers to top off card balances while waiting in line, which saves time when they get to the register.

"Today, one in five Starbucks transactions is made using a Starbucks Card and mobile payment will extend the way our customers experience and use their Starbucks Card," Brady Brewer, the vice president of Starbucks Card and brand loyalty, said in a press release.

Starbucks is one of the first major national retailers to have a mobile payments program in place.

The company started its trial in a handful of West Coast stores in late 2009, later expanding it to about 1,000 Starbucks inside Target Corp.'s stores. In October, it added another 300 stores in New York and on Long Island.

Starbucks has said that its payment system has benefited from word of mouth among office workers who use the app to buy their morning coffee and then discuss the experience with co-workers.

In December, Starbucks announced plans to roll out its mobile payment app, which was developed by the Larkspur, Calif., vendor mFoundry Inc., to all company-operated stores by the end of March.

Starbucks said customers loaded more than $1.5 billion on Starbucks Cards in 2010, up 21% from a year earlier.