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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