UPDATE SOME MORE: In which I tentatively decide to believe in this again

Second update: Maybe it’s not a hoax after all? I give up.

Update: It turns out that this was a hoax. Bummer.

Original Post: Sip and Pay It Forward

Social science + Starbucks? Two great tastes that taste great together.

I was clicking along at MentalFloss and came across a tidbit in a blog post about Jonathan’s Card. Jonathan Stark has posted an image of his Starbucks card’s barcode on the internet. Anybody is able to download it and use it to purchase items with it. People are also able to refill the card. This twitter feed updates whenever there’s a transaction on the card.

This is pretty cool. People seems to reload the card quickly, although I notice that it seems to be in pretty small denominations. As an experiment, it seems to prove that people will pay to allow something like this to continue, although presumably the card barcode download is anonymous and there’s no onus on them to do so.