The Starbucks app for Android and iOS has been used to pay for over 42 million orders around the world since launching in January last year, according to a report on VentureBeat. Rather than relying on wireless tech like NFC, the company's app replicates its rewards card, with customers paying for transactions using a simple barcode. Low-tech it may be, but the app is growing in popularity — last December, 11 months after launch, the company announced it had processed 26 million transactions using the app, meaning it has been used for another 15 million payments in the last four months alone.

Starbucks hopes to expand on the app's success with new technologies. "You're going to see us as a company that will push the envelope around mobile pay," says chief digital officer Adam Brotman, "we want to innovate in that area before others catch up." While it's great to see a large company pushing digital payments, we'd prefer to see it get behind a broader standard like Google Wallet, rather than building out its own proprietary system.