Starbucks Japan wants customers to pay for coffee with pens
Because where's the fun in paying with a card or a phone?
Starbucks Japan sells a range of NFC-enabled goods and accessories linked to a digital wallet, which you can use to pay for your purchase. Unlike Costa's NFC-enabled cups in the UK, though, those products aren't even related to coffee. The latest addition to Starbucks Japan's "Touch" line of goods, for instance, is a pen -- a stylish one at that, with coffee-colored ink. It uses a contactless technology called FeliCa that's widely used in the country, allowing customers to simply tap it on a payment terminal.
Starbucks Touch: The Pen -- that's the item's official name -- joins the other products in the line, including a small NFC-enabled purse called "The Hug" and a phone case. It's coming out in Japan on September 25th and will set buyers back 4,000 yen (around US$40), which comes with a 1,000 yen consumable load. Kinda pricey when customers can always just pay with a card or a phone, but we imagine that the people getting Starbucks Touch products aren't just buying them for their NFC capabilities.
