Starbucks Corp. said JPMorgan Chase & Co. will process transactions previously handled by Square Inc. as the coffee company rolls out terminals that accept chip-based cards.
A JPMorgan unit will handle non-mobile payments and U.S. retail card payment transactions in stores operated by Starbucks, the retailer said Thursday in a statement on its website. Mobile transactions will still be serviced by First Data Corp., it said.
The new partnership "lays the foundation for a coming wave of innovation in our digital payment ecosystem," Starbucks's chief operating officer, Kevin Johnson, said in the statement. "These investments and innovations will both strengthen our payment platform and be increasingly accretive to our business over time."
Square, known mostly for a device that converts mobile phones into credit-card readers, has been looking to end its partnership with Starbucks after posting less revenue from the deal than transaction costs. Square had sought to benefit from the 2012 arrangement as the Seattle-based coffee chain promoted the tech company's mobile-payments application, but that never took off.
