The Canadian coffeehouse and restaurant Tim Hortons launches a financial unit called Tims Financial and introduces their first product: a credit card. Customers receive reward points for different transactions and higher rewards for transactions at Tim Hortons. The company was providing a rewards app before, and launching their first financial product inside the app is the logical next step.
When you think about a coffee maker getting into financial services, you have to think about another player: Starbucks. The US coffeemaker is widely known in the fintech ecosystem as it managed to convince its customers to do something very unique: transfer billions of dollars into their wallets. But the very special characteristic of these wallets is that customers are not eligible for payouts and can only redeem the funds for Starbucks products. Starbucks launched their initial app in 2009, and customers transferred $1.3 billion into their wallets alone in Q3 of 2023.
The success of Starbucks wallet is fascinating, and other coffeemakers, restaurants, and retailers would do a lot of things to achieve similar results. But it’s not easy, and keep in mind that Starbucks started their efforts in 2009. Companies that have a strong brand and regular customers might be more likely to succeed. So perhaps Tim Hortons has a good shot at succeeding?
