So, as you all know, Starbucks has gone completely modern and now out-moderned all of their snobby, posh customers. According to this website, here we go with the new technological revolution...pay it off your iPhone or Blackberry! Yes, you can pay your $4 coffee with your $400 phone. All is well with the world.
Seriously, this fad is likely to revolutionize the way we view a common transaction according to this article. Just pause a moment to think that your grandchildren will not remember what it was to carry cash or even cards! My grandfather was concerned about the scare of debit cards, and now we're throwing even those to the wind. Starbucks has developed a system to facilitate payment of your Starbucks products/services via an account on your Smartphone. This is supposedly in order to cut down on the long lines by increasing efficiency. My question is whether this really will save time. The amount of time saved by not having to dig out a debit card and swipe seems negligible to me. However, maybe it will truly affect the process. It does seem to be convenient for the store, but what about the customer? Doesn't maintaining an extra Starbucks account decrease convenience? While the money is there idle, it could have been in the bank ensuring your assets or covering bills...not to mention the small lump of interest associated. Therefore, while I commend Starbucks for taking a leap into the next age of technology, I wonder whether this will be worth the costs of the R & D associated with developing the venture.
Great post Brittou!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that this is not going to necessarly improve the "Starbucks experience" and I really don't see how it would improve the wait time in the shop. Maybe one day we'll be able to do everything with our smartphone; in the mean time i'd rather not depend on my phone for any of those things.
In my opinion, it isn’t worth it, just imagine the process of people taking their phones out, unlocking it, finding the app, waiting for the app to open and confirming a transaction. Some users will undoubtedly have problems like bar code not readable due to smudge, finger-grime riddled phone screens. I haven’t said the technology is bad but it is hardly worthwhile for anyone carrying a credit/debit card. It won't work for my mother and most senior citizens, but it will work wonders for the yuppie crowd already heads down over their smartphones…
ReplyDeleteYes, it seems like it would not make a difference for the time used to pay for coffee, it is just a convenience for the current card holders to have one less plastic card in their wallets, and one step more into the future coming for the pay as you go trend. Let's hope they fix the glitches of the machine reading a code out of the phone and everything will work wonderfully.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that having idle money in a Starbucks account is not the best way for consumers to store their money. Having worked at Starbucks, I can tell you that the sad thing is many many people will indeed keep large amounts of money in such accounts (I've seen Starbucks card accounts with well over $150 in them!)This is an extremely inefficient way for consumers to store their money and sadly we can only expect this trend to grow...
ReplyDeleteYou bring up quite a few interesting points in your blog Brittany. Along with their 10 other accounts that an average person has to maintain in order to make timely payments be it your mobile bill or internet bill do customers really need another account to handle. But if the present system could be tweaked a l'l to make it a secure enough to use ur smart phones as u would ur debit/credit card it just might work.You wouldn't have to carry 10 different debit/credit or offer cards in your wallet anymore! With so advancement in technology i wouldn't be surprised to see a such a change in the future.
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