Asides

Starbucks Mobile Payment

By Roger ⋅ January 19, 2011 ⋅ Email this post ⋅ Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Today Starbucks announced the availability of mobile payment in all company stores in the U.S. (Press release). In September 2009 Starbucks started testing payment using QR Codes in sixteen selected stores in Silicon Valley and Seattle and extended the program in October 2010 to an additional 300 stores in New York City and Long Island. The extended program dropped QR Codes in favor of a stacked linear barcode PDF417 and this is the code chosen for the country wide rollout (image below).

Starbucks PDF417 barcode used in their payment system

Discussion

5 comments for “Starbucks Mobile Payment”

  1. The problem with Starbuck’s system is much of their business is at the drive up window (at least here in the United States) and they only have scanners inside the store. They also explained to me that they are advised not to take your phone to walk it over to their scanner.

    Posted by Jeff Korhan | January 19, 2011, 5:27 pm

  2. Thanks for the inside scoop !

    Posted by Patrick | January 19, 2011, 10:45 pm

  3. Do you know why they dropped QR? Difficulty reading the scans from the phone’s surface?

    Posted by Erica | February 19, 2011, 9:02 pm

  4. Oddly, in the photo gallery accompanying the press release, the iPhone app shows a QR code & the Blackberry shows PDF14.

    Posted by Erica | February 19, 2011, 9:09 pm

  5. @Erica The PR department made an error and included an old image from a previous release. There is no official reason for the change from QR to PDF417 but it may have something to do with the integration of the scanning software into their existing systems.

    Posted by Roger | February 19, 2011, 10:57 pm

Post a comment