The Starbucks mobile application introduced mobile payments via a “present and pay” mechanism last month. Essentially the phone (iphone only) serves as a proxy for your card and Starbucks updated POS scanners can read a QR code from your device to debit your account. This is certainly handy though as discovered recently also pretty hackable via some social engineering. As there is no password for the QR, it’s possible to snag a screenshot and use that on any other device. I see this as a low priority issue for Starbucks as you should have a password on your device anyway … but I digress.
This morning TalkAndroid reported on a new Android Widget app which offers Present and Pay to Android users. I just downloaded it and immediatly noticed that there’s a PIN option for the QR code. This is awesome on two counts. First, a developer has enabled starbucks mobile payment system for Android – ahead of Starbucks and secondly they’ve fixed the security issue in the process. Rock on!