So you put USD on Starbucks gift cards, sell the code to be used for a drink and receive the money in BTC. You're amassing BTC from disparate sources but it seems you'd be paying a slight premium, however you wouldn't need to register with any exchange.

You do get a pre-loading bonus of bitcoins to play with and you can use those to generate profits - like 1000 people put $10 worth of BTC on the app, spend $5 on a coffee then you have $5000 in BTC to "play" with, eg to sell on.

This does all look pretty suspect.

We do not trade on any reserves from customers like that. We're not the Gox of gift cards.

OK. Thanks for cheap drinks, I guess, but what's in it for you? I mean, how long do you plan to keep this up?

Hm... not sure how long we'll keep it up. The discount is a promotion, but I imagine we'll keep it in some form as marketing for the product. 10% is a nice number, but we'll test it. As pointed out in other comments, it beats Starbucks's own program, which I like.

We can afford the discount by saving money elsewhere. No credit card fees, etc.