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Starbucks Partners With Square
Square, the start-up mobile payment service that aims to bring credit card transactions to anyone with a smartphone, has formed a partnership with Starbucks, a move that vastly increases Square's reach and visibility. According to the NY Times,
"This fall, Square will begin processing all credit and debit card transactions at Starbucks stores in the United States and eventually customers will be able to order a grande vanilla latte and charge it to their credit cards simply by saying their names. Though smartphone payments have a long way to go before they replace wallets altogether, Starbucks’s adoption of Square will catapult the start-up’s technology onto street corners nationwide, and is the clearest sign yet that mobile payments could become mainstream. ... At first, Starbucks customers will need to show the merchant a bar code on their phones. But when Starbucks uses Square’s full GPS technology, the customer’s phone will automatically notify the store that the customer has entered, and the customer’s name and photo will pop up on the cashier’s screen. The customer will give the merchant his or her name, Starbucks will match the photo and the payment will be complete."
Mediocrity loves company.
"Uh, yeah, I'll have a double Crono frappuccino and a venti Cloud -- be sure to leave room for Chocobo."
My work here is dung.
Was it just me who thought this would be about making sure Square-Enix developers stayed focused?
If they can track customers as they walk in the door, why even have a line at the cashier? You walk in the door, you get a push notification to confirm or change your standing order on your phone, and then you take a seat. Once your drink is ready, you get another notification, go to the pickup counter where they confirm your photo and give you your drink.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
How is this even possible, the accuracy of standard GPS and size of starbucks stores ensures there must be a high margin of error - unless I'm misunderstanding.
I am quite uneasy about all this gps tracking and logging which is going on these days?
Sure it's just a coffee in this case but do you really want everything logged and recorded?
How long before your inbox is getting spammed with we notice you haven't been in starbucks for a while here's a voucher to super size your coffee on your next visit. Should there be records of your movements associations and purchases.
Facebook has gotten ever more intrusive, especially with timeline they are recording where you go and who you meet up with.
Your smartphone will tag your location with gps when you take a photo in the exif information (firefox has an extension to read the exif and locate it on a map for you). I noticed facebook strips the exif data from photographs but facebook is still likely to retain it for their own purposes and of course facebook will turn over everything it has to the Police should they so request.
I'm all for using technology when it is useful to the user, but this constant casual surveillance is beginning to get more than a little creepy. You don't have to live in Syria to find a goverment who will use technology against you given the opportunity.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Am I the only one whose first knee-jerk thought was, "Wow, that's great! And from now on, I use nothing but cash!"
What's wrong with a simple asymmetric encryption system keyed to a particular cellphone, to be activated at checkout?
GPS-revealing apps already weird me out -- along with peoples' obliviousness to personal safety and/or security -- but automatically promulgating your name and photo to the store you enter quite exceeds creepy. At least this service is optional...for now.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
Square? You mean the purveyors of the butter-slice sized "I-can't-believe-it's-PCI-compliant!" (tm) mobile payment system? The first time I had some hipster process my card with his iPhone, I was apalled that there was a system that *can't* issue a physical receipt. I know, I know, most people swipe their cards and wave off the receipt, taking it on faith that the merchant will charge only the amount shown on the till and not a little more... or the maximum I just authorized with the card-present swipe. If the charge is off, you have no proof, no way of coming back, nothing at all.
Oh sure, I can stand there for another 2-3min while I ask said hipster to email or text me a "receipt" (at least it has a transaction number) usually accompanied with a lot of huffing and puffing about how giving me a receipt is a hassle and why do I want one anyway....? Because I just did the electronic equivalent of laying my wallet on the counter and saying "Take what you need." I'd like some acknowledgement of what was taken. Is that such a burden? I still write a few checks for bills and such so there are multiple transaction types debited against a single account, and I like to reconcile payments and balance my account periodically like a grownup.
I might slide more easily into the paperless future if the rate of "error" (not really) wasn't going up. Even in my run-o-the-mill consumer usage, I've had a few instances in the past year where a person (a local drive-up barista, a dude selling t-shirts at Comicon, etc) where there was a discrepancy between what I was told and what was punched in. It's never in my favor, and if I didn't catch it in tiny print on a smudgy screen before faux-signing with my finger... And when I ask for a receipt -- even a text pseudo-receipt -- they got all flustered, and one even refused (that was the one who'd added an even two dollars). Persoanlly, if you're that hard up to steal a buck from me, you can have it. But that doesn't mean it's right.
All of a sudden this older type of "skimming" is coming back into vogue, something that I haven't seen since... well, ever in my lifetime. My parents used to talk about deli guys with a finger on the scale, and cashiers with pennies on the counter to count how many dollars in the till they'd lifted from customers (so they could balance the till by pocketing the right amt of cash at the end of the day), but I thought they were funny old-people stories. Any now Square comes along with a magical box that re-enables a petty crime by depricating auth logs... and few people seem to give a crap.
Everything old is new again.
I think not...(*poof*)
Starbucks already has a mobile payment system for smartphones that uses a barcode. I haven't had to carry my starbucks card in my wallet for months. That makes is slightly more secure since my wallet can be stolen while my Android phone can be remotely wiped and is PIN-locked.
As soon as you enter a Starbucks, you're in a wifi area (attwifi) that you have to click-through before you get Internet access. If most Starbucks customers are like me, they use it. So the instant you walk into a store, there's no way for the phone to communicate to the store that you've entered, since the internet connection is being blocked by the clickthrough. This isn't a problem for the existing smartphone app since it already knows your card number and can generate the barcode. The balance and ability to reload won't work, but that may not be necessary for the transaction.
And yes, I like Starbucks. Their decaf is one of the few drinkable varieties.
You tried to snark, but you lose.
McDonald's, through their (insert three adverbs here) ____ ____ ____ processes, produce fries that give the best in the country a run for the money *if you time the batch cycles right*. That is, you watch the current batch of fries, wait until they burn on 4 customers, and maneuver your way to the first of the new batch. Beats EVERY TIME the nasty "home fries" that the indie restaurants seem to think taste good.
Taco Bell that you tried to hate on, has an even stronger case. You can't get out of a standard mexican restaurant under $15. (remember tips?) They have SEVEN of the best low cost meals I have ever had at fast food outlets. (Five if you count the Non-KFC Co-branded ones.)
What these lowballer corps do is force everyone else to offer something else besides price.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Their fries are pretty good and their non-nugget chicken products are pretty decent as well. However, none of that excuses the horror of the substance which they refer to as "cheese". It's an insult to cheesemakers everywhere.
Taco Bell is not Mexican food. It is Tex-Mex inspired junk food. That's not to say I don't enjoy it on occasion, especially a green buritto and a MexiMelt. But there are at least 30 good Mexican restaurants in Dallas I can go to for under $15 (food, non alcoholic drink, tax and tip), many under even $10. And there isn't a single meal at Taco Bell I would consider one of my favorite low cost meals. Del Taco just opened in Dallas, and I personally like it better.
The first time I had some hipster process my card with his iPhone, I was apalled that there was a system that *can't* issue a physical receipt.
How is that different than shopping online? You're relying on online vendors to present you with a confirmation page, which you can then choose to print on your printer, or have e-mailed to you. If you're buying a physical object, you might get a receipt with your shipment, or maybe just a packing list. If not, where's your physical receipt? It's up to you to print it.
Square will e-mail or text you a receipt. Is it that hard to enter 10 digits to get a text? If the person you're buying from is complaining, the problem is them, not the system.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
You must have really, really horrible credit cards. Get an AMEX. If a charge is off, call them - they'll fix it. I even had a situation where a mechanic shop charged me $1k for /not fixing/ my harley, so after a bit of protesting I walked out the door, called AMEX, and let them handle it. I did have to send in a little form defending my protest of the charge, but only because it was $1k, versus the $10 charge for a $3 coffee that would be much faster. The business is the one who is responsible for creating an audit trail they can not modify - when have you ever used the slip of paper (which fades to unlegible in microseconds anyway) to protest a charge after the fact?
Regarding McDonalds fries, I suppose that is a matter of taste. I prefer a thicker cut fry. That still doesn't change the fact that the product that McDonalds is best known for---their bugers---are mediocre to terrible. As you rightly point out, McDonalds is not competing on quality, but on price and speed. There are many places where I could get a better burger (and better fries, too), but I am going to have to pay more or wait longer (or both).
Regarding Taco Bell, you have once again made my point for me. I can go to a real Mexican restaurant and get a great taco, but it will likely cost me more than a Taco Bell taco. You buy a taco at Taco Bell not because you want a high quality meal, but because you want a fast, cheap meal.
Rhapsody in Numbers
These days, I'm going more and more back to trying to do only cash transactions for daily needs (groceries, eat out....etc). I really am not a fan of giving up my purchasing patterns to all these corporations just so they can try to sell me more or sell me crap I don't want or need.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I agree the "diet" appellation we still use here in the US sounds a bit odd compared "lite" as used most other places.
But yeah, it's the sugar. In a 32 oz drink that would be 90 grams of sugar and 360 calories. That's like eating an entire second hot fudge sundae (370 cal), except ALL of it is sugar.
A plain McDonald's ice cream cone has 150 cal, 18g sugar, 4g protein, 2g sat. fat, so it's actually relatively sane for a treat. I know, it's not the same as Haagen-Daaz, but personally I like it.
You've never really used this system, have you? Or does it actually take you two to three minutes to type in your e-mail address on a pad? Really? Two to three minutes? Because it's swipe, sign, optionally-type, done. I've done hundreds of Square transactions, and it takes seconds. You don't know what you're talking about.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.