Starbucks Not Accepting Cash?

Wow! I have heard it all Starbucks in Korea is using a cashless payment system. I'm not sure if that is a good move, since Starbucks needs cash like the rest of us.

riday, 6 June 2008
Starbucks Waves Away Cash Transaction, Deploys Contactless Payment


Joining the growing list of merchants accepting Visa contactless payment in Korea, Starbucks has announced that cash transactions will soon be considered an archaic form of payment and customers can instead pay for their purchases with a wave of their Visa payWave-enabled card or mobile phone.

Without the need to hand over their card or sign a receipt, consumers who use Visa payWave can enjoy the convenience of faster payment.

Compared with the average transaction time of 12 to 14 seconds for standard cash transactions1, a Visa payWave transaction takes as little as four to six seconds.

Cardholders will be able to make purchases of less than KRW30, 000 by simply waving their card or mobile phone in front of a point-of-sale terminal.
"Both Visa and Starbucks care about the customer experience. Visa payWave’s contactless payment technology makes it that much faster for our cardholders to get past the cashier. They just wave and go. Technology is meant to better our lives and the less time customers spend in queues, the more time they have to enjoy their cup of coffee,” Kim Young Chong, South Korea country manager for Visa Korea said.

Visa payWave card builds on the existing global EMV smart card standard that is currently being adopted by issuers and acquirers around the world and in Asia Pacific. Payments are made via Radio Frequency (RF), much like the ‘tap and go’ cards that many commuters are already familiar with.

There is an antenna – a thin copper wire inside the Visa PayWave-enabled card – that transfers payment information quickly and securely through the RF signal to a reader connected to the merchant’s point-of-sale terminal.

By simply holding a Visa payWave-enabled card at a close range of 4 cm from the reader, the card will be detected and the transaction made.

According to Starbucks Korea, this new innovative payment service will allow them to continue to provide a convenient experience that all their customers can enjoy.

Visa payWave-enabled cards, which bear the contactless ripple symbol on the front of the card, are available through 12 major credit card issuers including Shinhan, Samsung, Hyundai, BC, Lotte and are accepted at various merchant locations including CGV, Homeplus, Primus, 7-Eleven, Lotte World, Red Mango, Michaa, Kyobo Books and SK gas stations.