If you have a Starbucks card, and aren’t already using the Starbucks app for iPhone or the Starbucks app or Android, well, you really should give it a try. And it isn’t just because Starbucks cards add to the bulk in your wallet – and it isn’t just because the Starbucks app allows you to find the closest Starbucks store when you are jonesing for some Starbucks coffe (although the Starbucks location finder is pretty sweet), lets you check open jobs at Starbucks, lets you store your best Starbucks drink in the app, or lets you send Starbucks gifts (even reloading someone else’s Starbucks card!).
No, in our opinion you want the “my Starbucks card” app, because not only does it let you do a Starbucks card reload right on the spot (including using Paypal!), but it let’s you consolidate all of your Starbucks card balances onto one card – even from Starbucks cards you may have lost and not seen for years!
Case in point: we downloaded and installed the Starbucks app for iPhone, and logged into our Starbucks rewards card account using the email address and password with which we have registered several cards over the years.
Immediately the app showed us three cards: our current Starbucks gold card (the only one that we knew about), another card that we had last used and last seen in March of 2010 (over 2 years ago), and a keytag card that we had last used and seen in May of 2010. Frankly, we had completely forgotten about those last two cards.
Well, it turns out that those cards, that were lost and hadn’t been seen in two years, had a combined balance of nearly $40.00 on them!
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And the Starbucks app let us transfer the balances from those long-lost and long-forgotten cards to our current card, in just a few screen taps!
We didn’t think to take screen captures of the actual process, so we reloaded one of the old cards (through the app) with $10 so that we could show you how it works.
Here is the old (lost) card as displayed in the Starbucks app:
Tap on the balance box (where it says $10.00 in the above picture) and it brings up this menu:
Hit “Transfer Balance”, and then just drag the picture of the card you are transferring from to the card you are transferring to:
And now the $10.00 has been applied, instantly, to our gold card balance:
Pretty cool, eh?
You can also keep track of how many points you’ve earned towards your next free drink:
And finally, you can send someone a gift of Starbucks cash to put on their card, right through the app! Just click on ‘eGifts’ and you can send it to their email address (or their Facebook page, but that requires giving the app acccess to your Facebook login, which we never recommend).
If you wanted to send me a small Starbucks gift to thank me for this article, for example, you would send it to the address in the screenshot below. :-)
But by far, for us, the coolest feature was recovering nearly forty dollars in lost Starbucks cards.
Go here to download the Starbucks app for Android or iPhone iOS.
The Internet Patrol is completely free, and we don't subject you to ads or annoying video pop-ups. But it does cost us out of our pocket to keep the site going (going on 20 years now!) So your tips via CashApp, Venmo, or Paypal are appreciated!
Receipts will come from ISIPP.