Will Starbucks Bring Square Users? Here’s How We’ll Know

Remember when Square’s mobile payment app used to be called Card Case? Back at a time when there were no NASA-designed rovers on Mars, before anyone had ever heard of Olympic champion Missy Franklin…

Okay, so March 27 wasn’t all that long ago. But a lot’s changed since then — namely, Square has a huge new partner helping spur consumer adoption of its mobile payment app. But will coffee drinkers download Pay With Square just because they can use it at Starbucks?

It’s a big question for payments — and if you want to be among the first to know the answer, here’s how. Back in March, when Square updated its mobile payment app, we checked on the number of times the iOS version had been rated in Apple’s iTunes Store. At the time, only 161 consumers had given it a rating; today, that number has more than doubled — but only to 363 ratings.

If you want to know whether or not adoption is taking off, look no further than Square’s new investor partner itself: the Starbucks mobile app had been rated more than 61,000 times last March, and is now up to nearly 67,000.

When Jack Dorsey announced that Starbucks and Square had partnered, he said the former would accept payment from the latter’s mobile app “soon.” Once that starts, keep an eye on those ratings numbers to see the impact the partnership is having on the mobile payment race.