Lines at your local Starbucks could soon start moving a lot faster. That's because Starbucks' customers who own smartphones (iPhones and Androids) will be able to pay for their extra-skinny double lattes using the Square Wallet mobile device starting early next month.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz joined Square CEO Jack Dorsey (also Twitter co-founder) to make the announcement to a large group of employees in Houston on Thursday, just two months after investing $25 million in the San Francisco-based start-up.
Square is a free credit card reader that plugs into an iPhone or iPad.
No doubt the innovation will speed up transactions: Square users will simply show cashiers a bar code on their phones and the deal will be done. The Street said in an article today, "This could be the shape of payments forever."
Square will also process all related credit and debit card payments, saving the 7,000 store coffee chain considerable cash.
Square is a privately held company co-founded by Dorsey and Jim McKelvey in 2009.
The next step, as reported by The Times of India, will be to replace the Square with a GPS system that can detect the smart- phone owner's presence in a store; the customer will then simply say his or her name to the cashier to make a payment and the name and a photo will pop up on the register.
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