Starbucks bucks the m-payments trend – to the tune of 20million payments

As 2011 draws to a close – well there are only seven weeks until Christmas, eight until 2012 – I am already ready to dub this year the year of mobile payments. In reality, I should be calling it the year that everyone started seriously talking about mobile as a key payments channel for online, on mobile and retail payments as we are still waiting for many of the mobile payment tools launched this year to become mass market.

But while the world and his dog have been postulating how mobile payments will work, coffee giant Starbucks has quietly turned its app into a very successful mobile payment tool.

I wrote about this in this esteemed organ back in January when Buckies launched th payment app in the US and, to blow my own trumpet, I did say how significant it was. And so it has proven to be. As of the end of October, Starbucks has processed 20million payments through its mobile payments tool. That's pretty impressive.

While many people have been (over) excited by NFC as a payment enabler and while the arguments over how to power various kinds of mobile payment, Starbucks has snuck a simple barcode based system into its loyalty app and, latterly, it's ordinary app. And people have been using it with alacrity.

So what does this mean for the Telemedia space? Well, I think it offers a massive opportunity. For sure, eventually we will be using mobile as a means of paying direct from our bank accounts, probably over NFC, but for the short term at least, brands should be looking at how they can make their apps and m-web sites and mobile-based loyalty schemes transactional. Not transactional in the sense of being ale to by something from a site, but in using them to pay in stores.

Starbucks has the advantage that it's loyalty scheme works by storing up points on a card that can be used to get money off, so they sort of had the plan in place already. Even so, the coffee company has made a simple way to get its customers using mobile to pay - 20 million times in 10 months.

For Telemedia companies, the opportunity lies in convincing other brands -- particularly in the retail sector, but not exclusively -- that the kind of tools on offer around Payforit, pSMS, PRS and the many alternative billing tools available can sit behind apps that allow consumers to pay for things with mobile.

It is a stop gap, but it is potentially a huge one that is really where the mass market for Telemedia payments exists.

This Christmas will be a mobile one in the retail space, with customers researching what they want to buy, being marketed to by people wanting to sell them things, people comparing prices while in stores and, in my case, sitting on the sofa late at night, a glass of wine on the go, and actually doing the entire christmas shop via an iPad.

I will be using Amazon, where possible, so will be paying by one click (so a kind of mobile payment). Next year, assuming the collapse of the Eurozone leaves us with more than just some sticks and a cart full of manky turnips to eat, many people will be using their mobiles to pay for things. Many of them will have been using NFC enabled Droid phones running Google wallet for months by then, but there will still be a Telemedia opportunity, so go grab some of the action.

And I am doing my bit: my book -- M-commerce -- is aimed at explaining how mobile can change how all businesses operate, and payments is a big part of that. Buy it here in good old fashioned paperback or, if you are thoroughly modern, get the electronic version here – it'll make a great real or virtual stocking filler!