Visa Inc. has joined forces with Starbucks Corp. in what may be one of the emerging mobile-payment industry’s first national promotions designed to improve a payment brand’s status within a mobile wallet.
Visa is giving $5 to each customer who uses a Visa credit card to load at least $25 into a prepaid Starbucks Card account using a smartphone, the Seattle-based coffee chain says. Starbucks’ mobile-payment application supports payments made with Apple Inc.’s iPhone or Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry devices.
Starbucks introduced its mobile-payment app to check and reload card balances in September 2009 (
The Visa reload promotion, which began last month and runs through June, aims to “make it easy” for consumers to reload Starbucks Cards with Visa, a Visa spokesperson tells PaymentsSource.
When customers reload value into their Starbucks Card account, they are presented with a choice to use PayPal or any of the four other card brands, including Visa, MasterCard Worldwide, American Express Co. or Discover Financial Services, by entering that card’s number, which is stored on the mobile app. The app first offers the most-recent card the customer used to pay or reload funds for any subsequent transaction.
Customers may add several cards, including those of the same brand. The promotion is good for a one-time reload of only one Visa card.
The promotion is one of the emerging new techniques providers likely will use to engender mobile-payment trial and brand preference, analysts say.
This is “an easy way to gain visibility and consumer awareness,” and it may herald the beginning of more such promotions, Beth Robertson, director of payments research at Javelin Strategy & Research, tells PaymentsSource. But most mobile-payment promotions will be designed “as drivers of true mobile payment, rather than card-reload,” she notes.
The promotion is noteworthy and good for approximately one grande-sized Starbucks beverage, but “$5 will not build loyalty,” Brian Riley, a senior research director with TowerGroup, tells PaymentsSource.
“More significantly, this promotion shows that Visa is interested in holding on to its status as the primary payment choice for Starbucks Card customers, even though the cobranded Chase Visa card Starbucks used to offer has gone away,” Riley says.
A year ago, JPMorgan Chase & Co. phased out its cobranded Starbucks Duetto Visa card it introduced in 2003 (
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