Huh? Starbucks is allegedly the biggest bank in the entire world!
This is rather interesting...
It started with a cup of coffee and now they are on to international secret investments.
As of recently, Starbucks has made a huge push towards getting people to load money on the Starbucks app.
Experts have revealed that as part of their rewards programme, millions of Starbucks customers have preloaded money onto Starbucks cards, essentially loaning the company more than R18,192,750,000 ($1-billion) at 0% interest.
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People have dubbed this international brand as "a bank that sells coffee".
Watch the video explaining this business model below:
One Twitter user says: "It's in the name! Starbucks, bucks...money. How could we be so naive."
This comes as a shock to many as this could mean that Starbucks has a monopoly on the world banking systems.
The money that gets forgotten in the Starbucks account, where people load money on, will ultimately become breakage income that Starbucks can use at their disposal.
But it's important to remember that Starbucks is not a bank legally. So, Starbucks' balance can mostly not be withdrawn for cash like a real bank, and can only be used to purchase coffee. Hence, this allows the company to bypass financial regulations otherwise applicable to a regulated bank.
With thousands of locations around the world and brining in millions on the daily, who knows what's on the horizon for the giant.
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This digital brand strategy is golden and means success for this company for the foreseeable future.
Finchtalents says: "This approach is a win-win for Starbucks. Not only have they been able to encourage their customers to load a great deal of money onto the Starbucks app but customers clearly value the benefits they gain from this exchange."
Starbucks is a bank, change my mind pic.twitter.com/WnLLGiOqGj
— Colin Landforce 🛠,🛠 (@landforce) June 8, 2021
Many also allege that McDonald's is a real estate company which operates under a similar guise as Starbies.
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Image courtesy of Twitter