24 Percent of All Starbucks Transactions Made by Mobile

Starbucks has been pushing to be the poster child for mobile transactions, and for good reason.

With a mobile payments program that’s easy to use and full of rewards—though admittedly it’s dialed down those rewards somewhat in recent days—it’s not hard to see where its success lies.

A new report from Kevin Johnson, the company’s chief operations officer and president, shows that this program is more successful than many might have expected, accounting for nearly one in four—24 percent—of all transactions in the United States.

Johnson revealed that the company’s Mobile Order & Pay system was now home to an average of eight million transactions a month, which in turn represented about four percent of the total volume of payments in the second quarter of 2016.

Mobile payments accounted for that 24 percent, meanwhile, showing that Starbucks’ own program was facing big competition from other mobile payment systems, but Mobile Order & Pay certainly was catching on.

Mobile payments in general represented 22 percent of all transactions in December 2015, so there were also gains in mobile in general.

It didn’t hurt that Mobile Order and Pay saw a 40 percent increase in use over recent comparisons.

Use varied, of course, as Mobile Order & Pay represented over 10 percent of transactions made at the 300 busiest urban centers. Some stores during peak times saw use as high as 20 percent.

Gains in this sector are clear, and this is good news for not only Starbucks, but for mobile payments in general.

With good reason, too; every time Starbucks processes a payment itself, that’s a price it doesn’t have to pay to another mobile processor or pass on to the customer.

The more that Starbucks can process in house, the more it can save and, this time, pass on to the customer. If it can pass savings rather than expenses to the customer, it stands to come out ahead.

While Starbucks was never exactly regarded as the value provider in coffee drinks—usually it’s held up as an example of frivolous spending—to be able to return value to customers would be a welcome development, one that might bolster its return customer roster.