You can already leave your wallet in “your other pants” and still buy a cup of coffee with your phone, if you're in the right spot. Get ready for the “right spot” to be in 7,000 Starbucks.
Pay With Square
The first time I used my phone to pay for something was the most banal transaction in the entire world: I tapped my free flip phone to a console to buy a train ticket to school a few kilometers away. It was 2007, and I was living in Japan. But I kind of giggled the first time I did it at the Chelsea Cafe Grumpy, in 2012. Partly because I had to tell the barista my name in an oddly contrived way — "put it on Matt" — and partly because that particular Grumpy is (in)famous for banning computers.
Back when "Pay With Square" was called CardCase.
Source: vimeo.com
There are few things so obvious in technology that you're truly able to say it's a matter of when they will happen, not if. Paying for things with your phone seems to be one of those things, judging by the number of companies that are trying to make it happen. Google, Microsoft, Intuit, PayPal, Venmo, and Square, just to name a few, would like to replace your wallet with your phone. Square has just inked a massive deal with Starbucks that'll put in over 7,000 stores, where it will process every single credit and debit card transaction. And later this fall, customers will be able to use Pay With Square, the app that'll let them tell baristas, "Put it on Joe," without ever pulling their phone or wallet out of their pocket.
The Square deal is a big deal, precisely because it's, um, a big deal. The thing about mobile payments is that while they involve real currency — your real dollars — they don't quite work like dollars or credit cards. You can't use them anywhere, and just because you can use GoPayment at one place doesn't mean you can use it at the joint next door. If you play your cards right — I mean that sort of literally, plugging your credit and debit cards into the right patchwork of payment companies, provided you have the correct phone, and then visit the right places — you can kind of work your way through an entire day in Manhattan and San Francisco only using your phone to pay for things, particularly now that Google Wallet accepts all credit cards, not just a Citi MasterCard. A coffee at Grumpy, basic groceries at CVS, a sweater at Macy's, a cab ride home. But this isn't exactly an optimal experience. Cash is far, far more seamless.
