eMarketer: Starbucks' mobile payment service had 20.7M US users in 2017, over Apple Pay's 19.9M and Google Pay's 9.3M, and is expected to keep outpacing them
outpacing Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. http://www.axios.com/... Eric Friedman / @ericfriedman : Hearing that 23m+ people use Starbucks mobile app is huge, especially ahead of Apple Pay - http://techcrunch.com/... Just go into any Sbux and see the usage in action Don Richard / @donaldrichard : Not really that crazy. Starbucks has 1. a daily use case (frequency) 2. requires you to store cash in the app to complete said use case (reinforces behavior) 3. Works at every Starbucks (ubiquity/consistent user experience) Apple Pay and Google Play do not meet all 3. http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
By 2017 the US mobile-payments race had two rival designs: platform wallets like Android Pay, which launched in 2015 betting on universal NFC acceptance, and merchant closed-loop apps built around a single brand's traffic. Starbucks' win here is the closed-loop thesis validated — as Don Richard argues in the coverage, the app pairs a daily purchase habit with stored cash balance and total store ubiquity, three conditions Apple Pay and Google Pay didn't simultaneously meet.
The pattern was already spreading on the retail side: CVS Health launched its own CVS Pay wallet across iOS and Android in 2016, chasing the same frequency-plus-stored-value mechanics. The lead proved temporary, though — within a year Apple Pay overtook Starbucks as the top US mobile payment app, suggesting platform ubiquity ultimately outpaces any single merchant's habit loop.
First-order effects
- Starbucks holds the largest US mobile-payment user base with 20.7M users, giving it direct customer relationships, stored-value float, and purchase data that Apple and Google cannot see inside their own wallets.
Second-order effects
- Other high-frequency retailers have a working template to copy — CVS Pay shows the closed-loop playbook generalizes beyond coffee — pressuring Apple and Google to compete on acceptance breadth and bank partnerships rather than app features.
Third-order effects
- US mobile payments splits into two structural camps: merchant wallets that monetize loyalty and float versus platform wallets that monetize device scale — and the later crossover, when Apple Pay passed Starbucks in 2018, indicates the platform camp wins wherever acceptance becomes ubiquitous.
The trend: Consumer mobile payments are consolidating around platform wallets whose growth tracks the installed device base, squeezing single-merchant closed-loop apps into niche loyalty tools.