Starbucks will let customers place pickup orders via mobile app in one test market this year
Starbucks Has Bigger Plans in Mobile Payments Than Most People Realize — A decade after the idea was first sketched on the proverbial drawing board, Starbucks is poised to finally let its customers order their coffees from their phones.
Context & Ripple Effects
Starbucks had already built a mobile-payment base: its 2011 Android expansion extended app payments beyond its own stores, and the company reported 26 million mobile payments and $110 million in card reloads later that year. The pickup-order test turns that payment relationship into a transaction that begins before the customer reaches the counter.
The move also follows Starbucks’ push to make its app a broader in-store utility, including iPhone tipping and nationwide wireless-charging installations. Its app’s reported position as the most-used U.S. mobile-payment app gives the test an installed customer channel rather than requiring a separate ordering product.
First-order effects
- Customers in the test market can place and pay for pickup orders before arriving, while Starbucks store staff must prepare orders against an app-based queue rather than only counter demand.
- Starbucks gains a live test of whether its payment app can coordinate ordering, handoff and store operations in addition to processing transactions.
Second-order effects
- The test makes speed of fulfillment a product attribute for Starbucks: app adoption can shift demand toward stores that can keep mobile and walk-in orders moving together.
- Starbucks’ existing card-reload and payment activity gives it a direct channel to promote ordering, reducing reliance on a separate checkout interaction to bring customers back into the app.
Third-order effects
- If pickup ordering proves workable across stores, the coffee-shop transaction shifts from a point-of-sale payment event toward a pre-arrival workflow controlled by the merchant’s app.
- The model raises the value of retailer-owned apps that combine stored payment credentials with ordering and in-store service, while making operational execution—not app download alone—the constraint.
The trend: Starbucks is extending mobile commerce from paying at the counter to managing the entire pre-arrival purchase and pickup flow.