SEATTLE-Starbucks Corp.'s Grande-sized mobile payments trial has gone Venti. The Seattle coffee chain last week said it has expanded its smartphone payment system to include about 6,800 company-operated stores after piloting the technology for more than a year, according to American Banker, an affiliate of Credit Union Journal.
The payment application, which works with Apple Inc.'s iPhone and iPod Touch and some of Research in Motion Ltd.'s 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 application that generates the bar codes. Starbucks has said a perk of this system is it allows customers to top off their card balances while waiting in line, which saves them time when they get to the register.
