Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Starbucks, the coffee becomes 2.0 at the start of payments by iPhone

NEW YORK - From Starbucks comes a hint of the future. Moreover, the chain of coffee shops know how to attract more high-tech clients. At the time of the introduction of wifi, the U.S. coffee chain were among the first to allow customers to go online while sipping an "American." And now Starbucks is just to start the revolution "moneyless", with an application for iPhone and Blackberry that allows you to pay their drinks simply by pulling the phone out of his pocket.

Comes the version of Android, but not when Starbucks announced a release date. The shops in which the application is already active are 6800, scattered across the U.S., after a test period in some places specially selected in large cities. And the results, the method of payment "smart" has proved to be the fastest: the average waiting time per customer was the lowest of all.

After all the users waiting for the bill often fiddling with smartphones. Use one to pay seems like a natural step required for the digital age. Starbucks Card Mobile. This is the name of the application, available on iTunes, and it works like a regular prepaid card. By using your credit card or PayPal, you turn the money into the account application.

From now on, you can pay at the counter simply by tapping the "Touch to pay" on the phone screen, which will bring up a bar code that will be scanned at the checkout. The cost of consumption will be deducted from the residue deposited in the account application, and you can leave the premises without coins or credit cards to arrange to store.

One method that has no chance to at least apparently hacking or security breaches. At the bottom is not much different from going to the cashier with a cart full of product bar codes to scan. A very different approach from what Google is experimenting a bit 'of time, the Near Field Communication.

NFC. What Google is a much more ambitious project indeed. The idea of Big G is apparently closer to science fiction to everyday reality, yet not so far from materialize within a store, just to "see" an object to our smartphone, using the camera, to put in a virtual shopping cart (in addition to a physical).

At the exit of the store items are already paid. The difference compared to buying online is that the customer buys in a traditional way, but completely skips the process of cash and receipt. In short, the money does not exist anymore. Chuck Davidson, manager of innovation at Starbucks, believes the system NFC still a bit 'too far ahead of its time, both users can use the technology, both for the structures of the stores that have not yet reached this stage of evolution .

"When there are numbers, we will do it," says Davidson. But even today you can get in a Starbucks, eating out and not carry a wallet or the coins. Just smartphone.

No comments:

Post a Comment