Besides selling coffee, Starbucks is also a mobile Internet company.

App orders for Scandinavian twin-tailed mermaids are about to spread from South Korea to the stronghold of the United States.

Starting on Wednesday, if you are in the northwestern city of Portland, you will be able to order coffee (order) through the Starbucks iOS client. After placing an order, you can go to the nearest Starbucks to pick up a scheduled latte or Frappuccino. Also, Starbucks' backstage system will tell you how long it will take to get your coffee ready on app, so that you can pick it up directly when you get to the store.

At the same time, the payment of the fee is done directly in app. According to how Starbucks operates in South Korea, after booking a cup of coffee, app will generate a QR code, which includes the coffee ordered and the Starbucks card bound. After arriving at the coffee shop, show the Starbucks clerk the QR code, you will be able to know the information of the coffee ordered, and the coffee fee will be deducted from the Starbucks card automatically.

The convenience for users is that there is no longer a long queue at the Starbucks counter. After arriving at the store, show the QR code and take the coffee directly.

Adam Bortman, the chief digital officer in charge of Starbucks' digital business, told Wired magazine that ordering in advance through app can effectively alleviate the problem of queuing, which will lead to revenue growth for Starbucks.

Currently, payment for orders through Starbucks app is limited to one city in Portland. According to Starbucks' plan, the pilot will cover the entire United States by 2015. By 2015, the Android version of Starbucks app will also support direct order placement and payment.

As a major player in the US mobile payments industry, Starbucks has 12000 stores in the US and handles 47 million transactions a week, of which 7 million people use smartphones to pay at Starbucks counters, which is equivalent to 15 per cent of transactions conducted on smartphones. That number of users makes it significant for Starbucks to launch an order-to-buy feature within app, even if it wasn't the first, in Wired Magazine's words, just like Apple's Apple Pay had on consumer behavior.

By the second half of next year, Starbucks has more aggressive plans to launch a delivery service. Through app, users can place orders with one click, and cups of lattes or mochas will be delivered from offline Starbucks stores to users, similar to the delivery service of pizza parlors. At the same time, Starbucks plans to build an organization similar to Amazon fulfillment centers in areas with dense offices and offices, where baristas process orders delivered by app 24 hours a day.