There’s More Money Loaded On Starbucks Cards Than Customer Deposits At Several Banks

Image courtesy of Maulleigh

While we’re used to the idea of people keeping money in places other than bank accounts — preloaded debit cards, sock drawers, comic book collections — there’s one way consumers are storing their cash that’s more popular than several financial institutions: Starbucks cards.

The Wall Street Journal recently looked at data from S&P Global Market Intelligence to see where people are putting their money, including banks, services like PayPal, and nonbanks, like Starbucks.

With $1.2 billion loaded onto its cards by customers, Starbucks beat out several banks’ total customer deposits, MarketWatch points out: California Republic Bancorp ($1.01 billion), Mercantile Bank Corp. ($680 million), and Discover Financial Services ($470 million). It also topped Green Dot ($56 million), one of the largest pre-paid card providers.

It’s not surprising, when you take into account the fact that Starbucks sold millions of gift cards on Christmas Eve alone. And they’re using them: customers whipped out a Starbucks card to buy stuff 41% of the time in the U.S. and Canada as of the second quarter of fiscal 2016, MarketWatch points out.

PayPal, however, is even more popular than Starbucks, with $13.02 billion in global customer account balances as of the first quarter of this year. That puts it just behind TD Bank, and Capital One Financial Corp.

PayPal Isn’t a Bank, But It May Be the New Face of Banking [The Wall Street Journal]
Starbucks has more customer money on cards than many banks have in deposits [MarketWatch]

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