Starbucks Teases Web 3 Platform in NFT Announcement
The coffee chain says its digital collectibles will likely be chain-agnostic and come with benefits tied to its physical locations.
May 4, 2022 at 3:39 p.m. UTC:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/SEFEZ65TUNDHLJRYDSPP63PVVY.jpeg)
Starbucks NFTs? (June Andrei George/Unsplash)
The popular coffee chain says its NFTs will provide “unique experiences, community building and customer engagement,” complementing its current app-based digital ecosystem, according to the post.
In addition to just NFTs, the company alluded to a full-fledged “Starbucks Digital Community Web3 platform” possibly tied to mobile payments in-store.
The Starbucks app is currently the second most used form of mobile payment in the U.S., only behind Apple Pay, with over 30 million active users.
As to which blockchains the company is looking at specifically, Starbucks said little beyond the criteria being “fast and inexpensive.”
“Our approach to blockchain technology, while ultimately likely to be multi-chain or chain agnostic, will certainly start with collections backed by blockchains and infrastructure that is consistent with our multi-decade commitment to sustainability,” the company said in the post.
Starbucks’ plans to go into NFTs were first tipped off by the company’s CEO Howard Schultz in a company town hall meeting in early April in response to nationwide unionization efforts.
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Eli is a news reporter for CoinDesk. He holds ETH, SOL and AVAX.
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