The Starbuck app server was down this morning. Fortunately my daily Starbucks has Suica payments and the staff kindly stamped customer receipts so everybody could get the Starbucks Card refill discount. I posted a silly throwaway tweet about it but received some thoughtful reader feedback that put things in perspective.
On the surface it’s true that Apple controls Wallet NFC card access with PassKit NCF Certificates. However, the Mobile Starbucks Card for Osaifu Keitai came out in March 2014, two years before FeliCa made it into iPhone 7. The mobile card was put out by Starbucks Japan which was not majority owned by Starbucks USA. USA corporate bought out the Japanese business partner at the end of 2014 and brought it under full control. Up until then Starbucks Japan stock was a popular item for the free coffee ticket goodies that came with it. The food was better too. Mobile Starbucks is a relic that will likely be ditched at some point, like the free coffee tickets and good food.
Starbucks USA has never shown any real interest in creating a NFC rewards card. They chose the barcode app route that supports direct bank card registration and recharge. Eventually they added in-app Apple Pay and Google Pay support. Silly market analysts announced that Starbucks app was ‘bigger than Apple Pay’, until they decided that Apple Pay was bigger than apps after all.
Starbucks has put real effort into protecting staff and customers during the COVID crisis. It’s an amazing effort that doesn’t get much attention. Despite this, physical Starbucks Cards are still mag strip cards handed over to staff and swiped at checkout. If Starbucks put out a digital wallet Starbucks Card, how should they do it?
The easiest way on iOS would be an Apple VAS NFC contactless pass. In Japan this is what PONTA and d POINT cards are. Apple VAS is NFC A but it works in combination with any Apple Pay payment protocol, EMV, FeliCa, PBOC, etc. Smart Tap is a similar rewards card NFC method for Google Pay.
This is what customers get when they pay with ‘Apple Pay’ on the Lawsons JP POS system: the reader polls the Wallet default payment card and rewards card, the payment transaction occurs and points are automatically added to the rewards card.
This flexible ‘2 in 1’ contactless payment + rewards package would be very nice to have with Starbucks Card. For app users it would eliminates the ‘open app, pull up barcode, make sure card has enough balance’ nonsense that happens far too often and is easily thwarted by a weak WiFi signal. It would also reduce handling physical cards at checkout.
Unfortunately this requires a POS system that supports NFC contactless, and Starbucks in Japan only supports popular contactless payment cards like Suica and PASMO when the store location is in a station retail area. Starbucks has demonstrated a lot of forward looking business sense in the COVID era so far. I hope they rethink their Japanese POS strategy and incorporate contactless payments and reward cards as standard at all store locations.
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