[coffeenut]

I agree with a couple of points in the article regarding scalability and inconvenience.

However, there are a couple of points that aren't real blockers: 1) employees handling your smartphone - In reality, the couple of times I've tried this, I scan the phone myself; the barista never touches it. 2) typing in password each time - Don't separately password the app. It's no less secure than a physical card, and most folks already have a primary password to access their smartphone anyway.

I do agree that it's more hassle than it's worth. I have a 3g iPhone which doesn't support multi-tasking, but perhaps a multitasking smartphone would be less painful to use (just keep the Starbucks app running in the background for a quick switch). Not very scalable though.

The long delay to access apps is endemic to most smartphone apps today (especially so in devices like the iPhone which doesn't support a 'dashboard'). This needs to change in the future to enable a whole slew of new usage behaviors.

As far as scalability goes, hopefully an industry standard will emerge so that a single app can manage a wallet of multiple virtual cards. Once you can go from carrying a dozen loyalty cards to a single app, using a smartphone for this functionality starts to make a lot more sense.