Starbucks serves up contactless payments

Coffee shop chain signs contactless payment deal with Barclaycard...

Customers with a Quick Tap-enabled mobile will be able to pay for their Starbucks purchase using their mobile from spring 2012Photo: Barclaycard/Orange

Coffee drinkers could have an even shorter wait for their coffee thanks to Starbucks' plans to pilot contactless payment systems in some of its coffee shops.

The trial is the result of a deal signed by Starbucks and Barclaycard, in partnership with Visa Europe, and the contactless technology will be piloted across a selected number of UK coffee shops from spring 2012.

If the pilot is successful, contactless technology will be rolled out across most Starbucks coffee shops in the UK and Ireland.

Customers will be able to pay for purchases of less than £15 by holding their Quick Tap-enabled smartphone or a contactless debit or credit card over a payment reader.

The Starbucks coffee shops included in the pilot will join 50,000 stores including EAT, Prêt A Manger and Subway which already have contactless readers installed.

Marc Pettican, sales director of Global Payment Acceptance at Barclaycard, said in a statement: "Coffee shops are the perfect environment for contactless payments because so many of their customers are in a rush to get their drink and go.

"That Starbucks has decided to introduce contactless is great news for a brand seen as technologically innovative," Pettican added.

Mark Austin, head of contactless technology at Visa Europe, also said in a statement that contactless payments will become more visible in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympic Games.

"Starbucks' take-up of this new technology shows we are reaching a tipping point where contactless payments will become a mainstream way to make fast, secure, low-value transactions," he said.

According to Barclaycard, it has put 11.4 million contactless-enabled credit and debit cards into circulation, and last year the number of contactless payments processed rose by 150 per cent from 2009 to 1.7 million payments in 2010.