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Starbucks iPhone app updated w/ Apple Pay, enhanced menu, more

Apple announced Starbucks as an Apple Pay partner when it unveiled the mobile payment system last fall, and today the coffee chain is beginning to roll out support for Apple Pay through the latest version of its iPhone app.

While Starbucks does not yet accept Apple Pay in its brick-and-mortar stores, customers have long been able to pay with the iPhone app in stores using a digital Starbucks Card barcode scanned by a barista. Starting today, customers can load credit to a Starbucks Card within the app using Apple Pay as a payment method.The use of Apple Pay means you no longer have to manage separate credit or debit cards with a Starbucks account username and password to manually reload the app for payment in stores. You can simply reload your Starbucks Card within the app using any Apple Pay card, with Touch ID and your fingerprint authorizing the transaction. Using Apple Pay to reload your Starbucks Card will make the process much faster.

Accepting Apple Pay with a checkout terminal would be most ideal, but the current implementation does provide a way to both use Apple’s mobile payment service and still receive reward points for your purchases.

Apple Pay within apps is currently available for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. The iPad mini 3 and iPad Air 2 can also complete transactions within apps using Apple Pay, but the Starbucks mobile app is only available for the smartphone as paying at a register with a tablet would be less ideal.

In addition to including support for Apple Pay, the new version of the Starbucks iPhone app includes enhancements to the menu, and Starbucks says the Mobile Order & Pay experience at its Portland location has been improved with the new version.

Starbucks for iPhone version 3.2.1 is rolling out now for free through the App Store, and you can find our growing list of retailers and apps that accept Apple Pay here.

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Comments

  1. Nick V - 9 years ago

    Great update, but still not optimized for iPhone 6/6 Plus.

  2. Matt Vaughan (@mattido) - 9 years ago

    Yes we need 6/6 Plus optimization!

    • Zac Hall - 9 years ago

      Yeah, surprised to see Apple Pay but not iPhone 6 optimization in February 2015.

  3. Odys (@twittester10) - 9 years ago

    Apple had to cross the $700bil cap for Starbucks to finally realize – Apple is for real! I mean it is such a no brainer to include Apple Pay into the app – it should have been updated at launch !

  4. Odys (@twittester10) - 9 years ago

    In other news – Samsung preparing their own payment system – Samsung Pay – I almost fell of the chair laughing.

  5. Tuan Bui - 9 years ago

    i hate the fact that it still routes the process through their reward cards. why won’t they skip that step and just accept apple pay? just so starbucks can track you with the reward card for their own CRM and cut down on the transaction charge?

    • absarokasheriff - 9 years ago

      There’s 12000 Star Bucks locations plus 2 terminals per store. The target for upgrading to EMV is October 2015 so that’s a lot of terminals, training, deployment, back end work that has to go on. Plus the EMV/Chip and Pin upgrade almost always brings NFC with it. Meanwhile, many of their most loyal customers will already be use to Apple Pay in App.

      I would love to snap my fingers and see them deploy 24,000 NFC/EMV terminals but it takes time. Meanwhile, FireHouseSubs, Rubios, Pollo Tropical, Western Union, Jet Blue and many others have already upgraded their POS networks since the Official Launch. Albertson’s is in progress. And the app space is increasing near daily.

  6. Joe Cheng - 9 years ago

    just wondering if the credit card companies have a minimum fee per transaction or if it is always a % of the transaction amount. IF there is a minimum, I can see why this is a much smarter way to bypass the credit card company fees by only paying the higher transactional amounts every time a customer reloads their rewards card as opposed to every time they buy a cup of coffee.

    I know I personally reload $30 on my rewards card so Starbucks would only be paying Visa for one transaction as opposed to the 7-9 typical transactions the card can handle for every reload.

  7. Um. Soon as you try to re-load your Starbucks card with Apple Pay, the Starbucks app quits unexpectedly on a 6 Plus… try again, Starbucks?

    • absarokasheriff - 9 years ago

      Worked great for me but I onboarded with no other credit card. Could also be lots of network demand given announcement. Hopefully, they get it ironed out soon.

  8. Dishwater (@Dishwater) - 9 years ago

    So does not work on the iPad Air 2. starts the fingerprint identification then it quits.

  9. gigglybeast - 9 years ago

    Great, now Apple should follow suit and accept Apple Pay in the Apple App Stores and iTunes. It makes no sense that they don’t already do that.

    • absarokasheriff - 9 years ago

      I agree. They should eat their own dog food. They can have all my personal info that I give them voluntarily, know my tastes in Music (Weird Al, who knew), but they don’t need to know my credit/ debit card info. Tim Cook said yesterday they are not in the business of collecting personal information, should apply to iTunes as well at least when buying by Phone and Tablet.

      They might say we only have 30-40% conversion to iPhone 6 at this point but that’s still millions.

  10. Greg Novotravel - 9 years ago

    Starbucks can’t afford a decent french translator? ^^
    That should be written “Caramel brûlé” which, by the way, sounds disgusting :p

Author

Avatar for Zac Hall Zac Hall

Zac covers Apple news, hosts the 9to5Mac Happy Hour podcast, and created SpaceExplored.com.