I am loaning money to Starbucks

I subscribe to, and enjoy, Dave Perell's Monday Musings newsletter. This morning's contained a link to an article on Starbucks, which I found very interesting.

Basically, when Starbucks customers add money to the company’s app, they are effectively giving the coffee giant a free loan. At Starbucks' scale, the benefits are enormous. 

Dave Perell

Per Dave Perell, "Some sections that caught my eye:

• Starbucks has around $1.6 billion in stored value card liabilities outstanding. This represents the sum of all physical gift cards held in customer's wallets as well as the digital value of electronic balances held in the Starbucks Mobile App.* It amounts to ~6% of all of the company's liabilities. This is a pretty incredible number. 
• Stored value card liabilities are the money that you, oh loyal Starbucks customer, use to buy coffee. What you might not realize is that these balances simultaneously function as a loan to Starbucks. Starbucks doesn't pay any interest on balances held in the Starbucks app or gift cards. You, the loyal customer, are providing the company with free debt.
• The only way to cash out of Starbucks balances is to buy a coffee--a promise that Starbucks can always keep! And so Starbucks can immediately put its customer loans to work in higher-yielding opportunities like funding its operations and expansion.
• Each payment made through the Starbucks app is a payment that isn't made by credit card. Since each credit card payment will cost Starbucks 1-2% in interchange fees paid to the card networks and banks, the company saves a lot of money by guiding customers to its payments app."