Americans Are Keeping An Insane Amount of Money At Starbucks
One of the most clichéd money saving myths is the “latte factor”—the idea being that if you stop shelling out for a latte every morning, your savings would add up over time. As a money saving technique, it probably doesn’t add up, but there is still a lot of money swirling around the latte market. Consider this: Americans have over $1 billion saved up for future Starbucks purchases at this moment.
According to MarketWatch, as of the first quarter of 2016, Starbucks customers had a combined $1.2 billion loaded onto Starbucks cards and the Starbucks mobile app. By comparison, that’s more than the collective deposits of some financial institutions like California Republic Bancorp ($1.01 billion), Mercantile Bank Corp ($680 million) and Discover Financial Services ($470 million).
Unsurprisingly, the coffee giant is still well behind the top bank on the list: Bank of America Corp which somehow has its hands on $427.19 billion in deposits. Still, $1.2 billion invested in what are essentially prepaid gift cards isn’t chump change for the ‘Bucks (pun intended). Think of it this way: If you divided that money up among every American, each person in the US would have $3.76 on a Starbucks card – or about enough for a Grande Latte.
However, the number does make a bit more sense once you hear this stat: Reportedly 41 percent of Starbucks transactions in the US and Canada involved the use of a Starbucks card. Sounds like more companies should start accepting Starbucks cards. Or maybe the US can just scrap cash all together and give us all our own government-issued Starbucks card. It would finally end the controversy of only men appearing on US currency: They would all be replaced with a mermaid.