Starbucks Taps Adyen to Power In-Store Payments Across 940+ European Stores

WHY THIS MATTERS: The evolution of payment infrastructure for global retailers like Starbucks transcends simple transaction processing; it is a foundational matter of customer experience and operational continuity. This multi-market deal underscores a critical industry trend: the non-negotiable demand for system resilience. Adyen’s rapid, large-scale deployment across nearly a thousand stores is notable, but the real significance lies in features like “Store and Forward,” which protected over 45,000 transactions from network failures. For high-volume environments, every point-of-sale interaction counts, and eliminating transaction failures directly protects revenue and brand trust. This move signals that multinational brands are consolidating their disparate country-specific payment setups onto single platforms to achieve true unified commerce and guarantee stability in the face of connectivity issues. This level of reliability is now the mandatory benchmark for enterprise merchants

Adyen, the global financial technology platform of choice for leading businesses, has partnered with Starbucks Coffee Company to transform its payment infrastructure in Europe and the UK. Adyen has partnered with Starbucks in a multi-market European rollout, which spans 943 Starbucks stores across the UK, Austria, and Switzerland, supported by 2,375 Adyen payment terminals. 

This expansion builds on an existing partnership between Adyen and Alsea, Starbucks’ licensee, for which Adyen already powers payments for Alsea Mexico. Via leveraging Adyen’s unified platform, Starbucks is ensuring a consistent, high-quality experience for customers and employees alike.

Scaling at Speed Across UK and Europe

Starbucks’ transition to Adyen’s platform has been characterized by efficiency. In a major operational feat, Adyen’s platform was rolled out across 900 stores in just 7 weeks. At the peak of this expansion, Adyen and Starbucks successfully live-boarded 125 stores in a single week. Notably, this migration was completed during standard working hours, ensuring minimal disruption to the daily coffee ritual for customers and maintaining peak store efficiency,

Adyen has already processed the sale of over 20 million cups of Starbucks coffee across these markets and feedback from store partners has been overwhelmingly positive, with Starbucks Green Apron Partners noting that the new system is faster and more intuitive.

Adyen’s platform is also powering payments at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Milan, the brand’s Italian flagship. This expansion reflects a partnership that began with initial pilots and has since grown into a key component of Starbucks’ European payment strategy.

Offline Reliability with Store and Forward

A cornerstone of the partnership is the implementation of Adyen’s “Store and Forward” functionality to ensure offline reliability. This feature allows customers such as Starbucks to continue accepting payments and providing uninterrupted service during network outages, ensuring that customer flow is never compromised. The impact of Store and Forward is substantial: since August 2025, this technology has safeguarded over 45,000 Starbucks transactions across these three markets that would have otherwise failed due to WiFi connectivity issues.

“Starbucks operates at an extraordinary scale, where every second of uptime matters,” said Alexa von Bismarck, President EMEA at Adyen. “By moving to a single, unified payments platform, Starbucks has been able to simplify its in-store operations while gaining the resilience needed to serve customers without interruption. From rapid rollout across hundreds of stores to built-in offline reliability, this partnership shows how modern payments infrastructure can directly protect revenue and elevate the in-store experience.”

“At Starbucks, the quality of our coffee and service are at the heart of everything we do, and our technology must be just as reliable,” said John Elliott, VP Technology, EMEA at Starbucks. “Our partnership with Adyen, ensures that our payment technology is just as robust as our service. This stability allows our teams to stay focused on our guests and the coffee they love, without technical issues getting in the way.”

FF NEWS TAKE: This agreement clearly moves the needle, not just as a significant merchant win for Adyen, but as a blueprint for operational excellence in cross-border retail. The speed of the European rollout confirms that a single, centralized platform is now scalable and efficient enough for the most demanding global brands. We should watch for Starbucks’ inevitable expansion of this reliable payment infrastructure across its entire global footprint, leveraging the platform’s potential for deeper data insights. The industry will increasingly value systems that are proven to safeguard revenue by turning potential technical failures into accepted transactions.

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