It occurs to me that, with Square as a partner, Starbucks stands to gain a lot from the partnership. If you think that most of their transactions are in small amounts (under $7 generally), and most of those transactions are done by credit card (I'm making a presumption about affluent individuals' purchase patterns), is it possible they're trying to turn the price they'd normally pay for transactions into investment capital? They were pushing those Starbucks refill cards like crazy a while back..