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Starbucks Will Soon Accept Apple Pay

2 minute read
By Alex Fitzpatrick

Starbucks is among several new retailers that will soon start accepting Apple Pay, Apple’s mobile payments system.

Best Buy, KFC and Chili’s are also rolling out Apple Pay support, Apple Vice President Jennifer Bailey said Thursday at a technology conference in California.

Starbucks will test Apple Pay at a small number of locations before rolling out the service on a wider scale. The coffee chain already offers a popular mobile payments app of its own that accounts for about 20% of the company’s sales. A recent update added the option to order and pay for beverages before arriving at a Starbucks location.

It’s not clear if Apple Pay will support Starbucks’ loyalty program. The service added support for those programs with the most recent iPhone update, so it’s possible the feature will be there.

Apple Pay is available on the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus and the Apple Watch. Using the service requires that retailers accept the payment method, which many do not. Other phone manufacturers have introduced payment methods of their own: Google’s Google Pay is found on some Android devices, while Samsung recently introduced Samsung Pay, which uses technology that works at a greater number of retailers.

See What's Inside the Apple Watch

The display is carefully removed, revealing the innards of the Apple Watch iFixit
A plastic tool is used to remove the device’s battery. The Apple Watch sports a 3.8 V, 0.78 Wh lithium-ion battery, which has a life of about 18 hours for general use before needing a recharge iFixit
The Taptic Engine is the tiny motor that provides force feedback whenever the watchface is pressed or when the user receives a notification. Here, we see that it is attached to the Apple Watch’s speaker iFixit
The antenna assembly is removed, which likely controls the watch’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functionality iFixit
Removing the digital crown bracket is the final step before having access to the Apple Watch’s integrated computer chip, the S1iFixit
Deep in the Apple Watch’s casing is the S1, the integrated computer chip that gives the device its smarts. It’s extremely difficult to removeiFixit
At the bottom of the watch case lies the plethysmograph that serves as the Apple Watch’s heart rate monitor. The device may also be able to measure a user’s blood oxygen level, but Apple hasn’t promoted this feature, possibly due to FDA regulations iFixit
The separate components of the Apple WatchiFixit

 

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