"Pay by phone" at Starbucks, and well, basically anywhere near you!

In early 2009, Starbucks launched its pilot pay-by-phone application, also known as Starbucks Card Mobile with payment support at select San Francisco, New York City, and Target locations. Subsequently, Starbucks reported over 1.5 Billion dollars in mobile payments made through BlackBerry and iPhone smart phones.


According to Mashable.com,  the Starbucks Card Mobile app lets users add their Starbucks Cards, track rewards, which they receive for every Starbucks purchase,  and reload cards as needed via PayPal or bank debit/credit card. To pay with their phone, app users simply select “touch to pay,” hold up the app-generated barcode on their mobile device screen to the 2-D scanner at the register, and presto!

Following the success of the pilot program, as of January 19th, the mobile app is now accepted at over 6,800 Starbucks locations and over 1,000 Target locations nationwide and has been used by over 3 Million people as of March 24th.


According to Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, the past financial quarter was the best performing in the 40-year history of the company. In fact, Starbucks cards now account for 22% of all transactions, he says. 

Mobile payments is just one element of a much larger social and digital media strategy that Schultz refers to as a “blueprint for growth.” This involves the brand crossing over into the consumer packaged goods (CPG) category by leveraging its digital and social properties. Remarkably, the Starbucks brand is number one on Facebook with 29 million fans, and is also a top brand on both Twitter and Foursquare.


If the mass-early adoption that has taken place with Starbucks Card Mobile is any indication of the inclination of smartphones users towards mobile payments, then American Express will surely need a new slogan, because people will be leaving home without it!

Cheers,






Sources:
Mobile Payments
CNN Tech
Starbucks Newsroom
USA Today

Is Groupon As Valuable to Wall Street as it is to Main Street?

According to Groupon's site, they have over 34.25 Million subscribers with over 37 Million Groupons sold, saving over 1.5 Trillion dollars in over 160 cities across the US and Canada. Now those are some impressive numbers!

Unsurprisingly, cash-heavy Google was ready to buy into (or buy out) Groupon back in December of 2010 at an estimated 6 Billion dollars with estimate market valuation of 2 Billion dollars. Unfortunately for the folks at Google, Groupon's management had other plans in mind.

Now, I don't intend to sit here chip in my two cents regarding whether Groupon should've sold itself to Google or whether their 25 Billion dollar IPO is overpriced. What I can, and will say however, is that Groupon has its business strategy down!

I've purchased at least six different deals from both Groupon and LivingSocial and can honestly say that if it were not for the daily collective coupon emails with ACTUAL deals, I would've blown both outfits off from the first day. To my delight, however, that has not been the case!

Social media is here to stay, Groupon and LivingSocial have merely developed a business strategy that harnesses the unlimited possibilities that uniting the planet via the internet has to offer. This my friends is what a company's IPO is measured against! Equity growth potential, subscriber growth, 97% return rate for merchants, measured and proven market retention for listing retailers, even AFTER the collective coupons are no longer available.

IPO or no IPO, Americans will continue to consume, so you may as well beat everyone else to our attention!


Cheers,



Sources


TechCrunch LivingSocial
TechCrunch Groupon
Groupon
Inc.com