Last year, mobile payments company Square signed a massive deal to power credit card processing and integrate Square Wallet with Starbucks. Today, the company is announcing integration with another coffee chain–Blue Bottle Coffee.
According to a release, customers will initially be able to pay with Square Wallet at Blue Bottle’s Oakland, Brooklyn, and San Francisco Mint Plaza locations, with the company rolling out Square to its remaining stores in the coming months.
Blue Bottle will use Square Register as its full point-of-sale system (Starbucks does not use Square Register) to accept cash and credit card payments, track inventory, and monitor daily reports. Customers will also be able to use Square Wallet to make purchases just by saying their names.
“We put a great deal of thought into every detail in each of our stores. We think about the right wood for our counters, the best beans, and how we can continue to serve our customers the perfect cup of coffee as we grow,” said James Freeman, founder of Blue Bottle, said in a release. “Square’s attention to detail and focus on the customer makes Square Register the right choice for our business.”
Currently, Blue Bottle has 11 San Francisco Bay Area and New York City locations, with further expansion plans. The coffee chain just raised $20 million from True Ventures and Index Ventures and a number of angels, including Kevin Systrom, Matt Mullenweg, and Dave Morin.
As we reported last fall, updates to the company’s iPad-powered register, Square Register, has brought more and more small chains to the payments platform.
Square Register was reconfigured to support merchants of all types. Some of the more high-powered features included the ability to customize permissions for employees on the register, access to sales reports, and the ability to wirelessly print receipts or open a cash drawer to make change. Analytics allow merchants to segment consumer payments data and transactions, and users can access data around number of payments, subtotals, tax, tips, refunds, account deposits, etc. We’re told that revenue from Square businesses with multiple accounts is up seven times in the last six months.
While Blue Bottle is certainly not at the same scale as Starbucks, small to mid size chains still represent a huge opportunity for Square. A number of small, regional chains are using Square Register and payments including, Pitango Gelato in DC and Baltimore (5 locations), Cafe Grumpy in NYC (4 locations) Amy’s Ice Cream (13 locations) and Cartel Coffee Lab in Phoenix and Tucson (5 locations).
As part of the Starbucks deal, 7,000 Starbucks stores in the U.S. accept Square Wallet, and Square readers are also sold at company-owned Starbucks stores. Square also began selling its readers at Verizon stores a few weeks ago, bringing its total number of retail locations where the payments dongle is sold to 30,000.
Square is making commerce easy for everyone. Starting with a free credit card reader for the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices, Square Reader allows anyone to accept credit cards anywhere, anytime, for a low transaction rate of 2.75 percent per swipe, with no hidden fees. Square Register serves as a full point-of-sale system for businesses to accept payments, manage items, and share menu and location information. Square Wallet, available in the US, is the most seamless way to pay,...
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