Starbucks has deployed Squarebut has decided that the ordering function is too important to outsourceaccording to this article:
“Squareis putting its Square Wallet service out to pasture, announcing earlier thisweek that it’s retiring Square Wallet while offering one of the service’sfeatures a lifeline to another Square application, Square Order. Said service,now called Tabs, allows a person to pay for an item in a store merely bychecking in to a store and giving his or her name to a cashier. But don’t tryit at Starbucks.
‘Starbucksis not adopting Square Order in our stores,” said Maggie Jantzen,Starbucks spokesperson, as reported by ReadWrite. “We opted to build ourown mobile ordering solution, leveraging our own mobile app and world-classloyalty program.”
This hasn’t come as a surpriseto very many:
“Wedidn’t expect anything less, given all the new mobile app features that willhopefully be supported by Starbucks stores nationwide at some point next year.We’re speaking mainly of the company’s new mobile ordering and pick-up service,which it’s currently testing in Portland, Oregon.
AsReadWrite notes, it’s not as if Square Wallet was really all that convenientfor customers to use at Starbucks anyway. To pay for an item, like a scone or acoffee, Square Wallet users had to fire up their apps and tap a button to pullup a code, which a cashier would scan in order to conduct the transaction.Only, in doing so, said purchaser wouldn’t be able to earn any rewards pointsat Starbucks for the transaction. In contrast, one could also just useStarbucks’ app—completely with automatic card reloading for when one’s balanceis low—to pay for an item using the exact same process (earning reward pointswhen doing so, too).”
Square remains hopeful thatStarbucks won’t end the relationship altogether:
“Starbuckscontinues to be a partner of ours and we continue to process their payments andwork closely together. We have nothing to share regarding Starbucks offeringOrder,’ said Johnny Brackett, a Square spokesperson, as reported by ReadWrite.”
Overview by Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation for Mercator Advisory Group
