Dive Brief:
- Restaurants including Starbucks, KFC, and Chili’s will accept Apple Pay starting next year, according to product lead Jennifer Bailey.
- According to Quartz, this move from Starbucks could help build adoption of the mobile wallet, which so far has been slow to catch on.
- Starbucks has led the marketplace in encouraging customers to use mobile payments, and more than 20% of customers now use its mobile tools to pay.
Dive Insight:
Apple will turn to Starbucks and other restaurants to aid in encouraging adoption of the Apple Pay mobile wallet. With more than 20% of its sales resulting from mobile apps, that ubiquitous coffee chain is seen as particularly important to Apple Pay’s growth.
Starbucks customers have been able to pay via smartphone since 2011, using the company’s apps to make purchases and accrue loyalty rewards wirelessly. With EMV conversion underway nationwide, it’s an opportune time for Apple Pay to expand into more retailers—and especially those where mobile payment has shown traction.
Starbucks says it had more than 13 million mobile users in the U.S. in the first quarter of fiscal 2015 who contributed 16% of all transactions. This summer, a rough estimate from PYMNTS.com said that only about 3.6 million users had tried Apple Pay successfully.
