Starbucks makes deal with cryptocurrency platform Bakkt

By Ben Malandrinos

With interest and values of crypto-currencies are tanking, can coffee brew a revival? Credit: UnSplash

Global coffee conglomerate Starbucks has made a deal with US cryptocurrency platform Baktt to allow customers to use digital currency at their outlets.

The Bakkt platform allows Starbucks customers to spend, sell and buy digital assets, connecting the current merchant infrastructure with new blockchain technologies.

Starbucks was a major contributor to the investment in Bakkt’s platform and has now been named a partner in the venture.

The digital asset spent by customers will be instantly converted into conventional currency by Bakkt’s software, and immediately received by Starbucks, in the form of conventional currency.

Using Bakkt as a middle man between customers and businesses bypasses third party corporations like Visa and Mastercard. The new platform will also make transactions between customers and Starbucks much faster as there will be no holding time during the transaction process.

The cryptocurrency market huge took a fall in value during 2018, from 604.81 billion dollars to 130.70 billion dollars by the end of December 2018.

Taylan Gülmez, Senior IT Infrastructure Engineer at Chenavari Financial Group explains how Starbucks will not have to worry about this: “Bakkt uses a form of cryptocurrency called a ‘stable coin’ which maintains its value against currency like the dollar or pound, as Bakkt is only the ‘crypto-middleman’ for Starbucks the company will not hold any digital assets making the deal relatively risk free.”

The Sawmill Café and Bakery in Stratford, London offers customers the option to pay for their coffee or pastry with the cryptocurrency bitcoin. The café takes payment in cryptocurrency without converting it to pounds and holds the digital currency as an asset.

Lana Zoubata, owner of the café says: “we started taking bitcoin as a payment about three years ago, but it has almost completely slowed down now, very few customers use it and I think it was just a fashionable technology during that time.”

Although the current cryptocurrency climate shows a decline, with investments into the technology, like the Starbucks and Bakkt deal, it is far from obsolete.

Starbucks has not announced the date they will be implementing the Bakkt payment system in their stores and the platform has already suffered setbacks since its launch.

Although you might not be using a cryptocurrency to buy your pumpkin spice latte in the near future, the reality of an alternate crypto transaction method is already upon us and gaining traction fast.

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