Starbucks, which started celebrating Christmas with a nice tech piece (the coffee giant launched a mobile device app which animates characters on seasonal red cups in the U.S. and Canada), is planning to continue to enhance consumer experience with technology next year with introduction of it mobile app payment system to the UK market on January 5, 2012. The new service comes on the heels of the recent announcement about the upcoming launch of the My Starbucks Rewards program across the country.

Photo: Starbucks Mobile Payment, www.pixelmagix.com

The application first appeared in the US earlier this year, and the brand says that 20 million transactions has been made using the technology across the 6,800 US stores of the coffee chain—in the UK, consumers will be able to use the app at all 700 Starbucks stores. “There’s no doubt that mobile payments are going to be the future of shopping, but it’s not clear how it’s going to develop. We just didn’t want to wait. Ours is so simple and it enhances the whole experience for customers,” noted Brian Waring, VP of marketing and category for Starbucks in the UK.

Starbucks will introduce apps for both iPhone and Android, and is sure that the new service will help consumers save their time while ordering at Starbucks—they are planning to reduce transaction time by 10 seconds, and, which is more important, eliminate any queues in the stores. With the app, consumers can add their Starbucks Card, check the balance and rewards and reload it if needed. They get a unique barcode, which is scanned at the register and that’s how the payment is done.

«We wanted to find a way for them to pay in the quickest way possible. Because our customers want it, we have created our own custom-built mobile payment technology rather than waiting for the near field communication technology which is currently not widely available. We’re always thinking of new ways to add value to our customers and give them more reasons to choose Starbucks,» added Waring.