Starbucks announced it will soon no longer accept Square’s mobile payments as the company looks to build and distribute its own “mobile ordering solution, leveraging our own mobile app and world-class loyalty system,” ReadWrite’s Owen Thomas reports.
The two companies will continue working together in other ways, but no longer working with Starbucks on mobile payments is going to hurt Square, as it would hurt any mobile payments vendor. Based on Starbucks data charted for us by BI Intelligence, Starbucks’ mobile payment volume leapt to $517 million from $302 million a year ago — a jump of over 70% — with over 12 million current users of the mobile app.
Worthy of note: Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said the Starbucks app in 2013 accounted for 90% of the $1.3 billion it made through in store mobile payments, meaning Starbucks processed $1.17 billion in mobile transactions that year. Square will no longer have any piece of that pie.
