Like many this season, I’ve received a Starbucks gift card. Three to be exact. And instead of bothering with the Starbucks website, I figured there must be some way to add the balance to my existing virtual card/account via the Starbucks iPhone app. Indeed there is… And the trick is that you must first add gift card to Starbucks app before move balance to existing card. Follow along below for details:
- From within the Starbucks app, bring up your current card(s) by tapping “Pay” in the upper left
- Click “Manage” towards the lower right
- Click “Add Starbucks Card” towards the bottom
- Enter the new Starbucks giftcard number and 8 digit pin, which you may have to scratch off
- Click “Add” in the upper right and “Cancel” the Passbook prompt
- Once presented with the gift card, click “Transfer Balance”
- Click on “To” to if you’d like to change the card you’re moving the gift balance onto
- Click “Transfer” towards the bottom to complete the transaction
- Click “Remove” so that the empty gift card doesn’t clutter your app
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If you ever get an electronic gift card, you may discover that the Starbucks app does not support pasting in the ID as copied from the e-card (email or web page). Combine that with the fact that it doesn't remember the entered card number if you leave the app to go find the code (or even more digits of the card number) and the whole process ends up requiring a pencil and paper (or a second device). :-(
Sorry, to clarify (I just checked)... The app DOES support paste but forgets the entered card number if you leave the app to go find the corresponding code. So you have to memorize that (or write it down) to be able to add the e-card.
A couple of thoughts:
First, I hate gift cards. If someone wants to give me $20, then just give me $20 in cash and it works everywhere, doesn't expire, and doesn't have any fees or degrade over time. I think the law may have changed but gift cards typically have fees associated with them after x number of months and eventually those fees will make the card useless.
All that being said, the iPhone Passbook looks to me like it makes a simple process more complicated. I've tried the 'loyalty card' apps before and they'd rarely scan correctly. I don't see how the Passbook app would be any more reliable. A more reliable method, to me, would be NFC that is being built into newer Android phones. Supposedly you can just tap it and it just works. All that being said, it's really rare when I see any place to tap a credit card, phone, or anything else. Supposedly it's popular in Europe but it just never took off here.
I'd love the phone to be a virtual wallet for these types of things but it just seems like it's at least a few generations of phones into the future AND a few generations of POS systems into the future.