Starbucks Teases Web 3 Platform in NFT Announcement

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Starbucks plans to launch a series of non-fungible token (NFT) collections, according to a blog post made by the company on Tuesday.

The popular coffee shop franchise says its NFTs will provide “unique experiences, community building and customer engagement,” serving as a compliment to its current app-based digital ecosystem, according to the post.

In addition to just NFTs, the company also alluded to a fully-fledged “Starbucks Digital Community Web3 platform” and 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.

Read more: Starbucks Chairman Is Hot on Blockchain, Cold on Bitcoin

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 ape 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.