• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, December 6, 2011

Is Starbucks wasting its time making coffee? The company is showing serious promise as an app maker. Indeed, the coffee queen says it has processed over 26 million mobile payments since January, accounting for $110 million in revenue.

“That's only a drop in the bucket compared to the $11.7b it did in revenue last year, but it still represents five percent of the total Starbucks card business for the year,” writes The Verge. 

Even more impressive, over 6 million of those mobile transactions occurred during the past nine weeks, which is more than double the 3 million transactions the company saw in the first nine weeks post release, notes VentureBeat.

“The novelty of paying at Starbucks with a mobile phone isn't wearing off, apparently,” quips The Seattle Times. 

The data also shows that a growing number of consumers are going wallet-free, and opting instead to pay for their daily coffee runs with the Starbucks mobile app. 

“We’re already out there as the largest retailer doing mobile payments,” Adam Brotman, VP/GM of digital ventures at Starbucks, tells VentureBeat.

“Starbucks presented the stats to emphasize its contention that 2011 was the ‘year of mobile’ for the company,” notes Mashable. “Among other recent highlights was the company’s Cup Magic augmented reality app, which has spurred 450,000 ‘engagement points’ since its November release.”

Starbucks mobile pay, a prominent feature of the company’s iPhone and Android applications, was released in the U.S. in January.

Consumers can use the app to load money on to a digital Starbucks Card and present a 2D barcode to pay-by-scan at the register at more than 9,000 locations.