Starbucks To Add Tipping Function To Mobile Payment App

Image courtesy of (shivpics)

One of the knocks against Starbucks’ mobile payment app is that it doesn’t have a way for the customer to add a tip if they want to. But the coffee colossus has apparently realized the error of its ways and is working on a way to allow for tipping.

The tipping functionality won’t be available until next summer, reports the AP. But when it does launch, it will work for both the existing Starbucks app and the Square app Starbucks plans to release in November.

Last week, Al Sacco of CIO.com wrote that while he loves the convenience of using mobile payment apps at Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, the employees behind the counter aren’t in love with them.

“In fact, some of them clearly dislike the apps…” he writes, explaining that the cards “do away with the change customers receive after paying. In other words, the mobile payment apps drastically reduce the tips coffee servers receive. And when you’re making minimum wage, or close to it, tips make a difference.”

Judging by the comments of Starbucks workers on Starbucksgossip.com, there are a wide variety of responses to the lack of tip-ability in the mobile payment app and Starbucks cards..

“A lot of the regular gold card customers at my store will leave a big tip (5+ dollars) when they reload their card in store, to make up for not tipping on each transaction,” says one.

“Gold card program and the app have killed tips in my store. it’s pitiful now,” counters another.

“I haven’t noticed a decrease, but my store doesn’t have a lot of people using the phone app,” writes yet another barista. “It would be awesome though if Starbucks could create a way to tip via the Starbucks card app. Considering how Starbucks makes US partners pool tips by the week, it wouldn’t be so hard for there to be an option on the Starbucks card app to leave a tip, which Starbucks tallies, and at the end of the week, each store pays out all the added up tips to its baristas.”

And finally, there is this gem: “As a barista of nearly ten years, don’t worry yourself about the tip. Honestly, if you’re nice, that’s all the tip most of us need. Anything else is just a bonus.”

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