Skip to Content

Square Gets Chummy With Starbucks

Square will soon be accepted in thousands of Starbucks stores.
August 8, 2012

Square, which offers a tiny credit-card reader that plugs into smartphones and tablets, announced a partnership with Starbucks on Wednesday that will allow customers to pay with Square at almost 7,000 Starbucks stores starting in the fall. Starbucks is investing $25 million in the San Francisco-based startup and the coffee chain’s CEO, Howard Schultz, is becoming a part of Square’s board.

The partnership gives a huge boost to Square, which has typically been thought of as a tool for local businesses, not publicly traded retail giants. It’s also another sign that Starbucks sees the growing importance of mobile payments–the company already has a popular mobile app that customers can use to pay for their coffee drinks.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.