Is Starbucks going cashless in the U.K. on October 1, 2024? No, that's not true: A spokesperson told Lead Stories that Starbucks does not have a cashless policy in that country. This appears to be a reincarnation of a recycled 2022 rumor that baselessly speculated about the same cash ban going into effect in October of that year.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, where it was published on September 10, 2024. It said:
Good bye Starbucks nobody cares about your globalist Agenda.
The post shared what appeared to be a photo of a Starbucks window displaying the following announcement:
WE'RE GOINGCASHLESSFROM 1st OCTOBER 2024WE WILL ONLY BE ACCEPTING CARD,CONTACTLESS & STARBUCKSREWARDS PAYMENTSPLEASE ASK OUR TEAM FOR FURTHER DETAILS.
This is what it looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Sep 18 14:31:11 2024 UTC)
The post implied that Starbucks, the Seattle-headquartered chain, decided to eliminate cash purchases at all its coffee shops around the globe. This fact check will focus only on the U.K.
On the same day, the same image appeared on a self-described parody account (archived here) mimicking official Starbucks pages but unrelated to the company.
A closer examination of the picture tied it to one specific country: the U.K.
As seen in the screenshot below, flipped vertically to improve its readability, the reflection in the picture on X showed a Cards Direct logo.
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Sep 18 15:21:18 2024 UTC)
And, as of this writing, that chain operated only in the U.K., according to its website:
(Source: cardsdirect.co.uk screenshot taken on Fri Sep 20 23:40:29 2024 UTC)
A Starbucks spokesperson told Lead Stories via email on September 18, 2024:
I can share this is not true: Starbucks does not have a cashless policy in UK. The majority of stores continue to offer cash payments to customers; however we operate alongside various licensee business partners, which means this may vary from store to store.
Similar claims previously circulated in 2022. At the time, they were reviewed by Reuters, Full Fact and Logically Facts. None of those outlets found any evidence suggesting that Starbucks planned to impose a regional or worldwide ban on cash purchases.
A search across Google News for the keywords seen here (archived here) showed no credible reports that such an announcement was made since then.
Had the claim been true, it would have likely appeared on the Starbucks official website. Though it mentioned an increase in cashless payments during the pandemic in 2020 (archived here) and cashless coffee shops in South Korea in 2024 (archived here), neither the News section (archived here) nor the Press Releases section (archived here) said anything about a ban on cash purchases starting on October 1, 2024, (archived here) in the U.K. or elsewhere in the world.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about Starbucks can be found here; about the U.K. can be found here. International stories are here.
