Starbucks Just Figured Out How To Take Your Money Over Twitter

Starbucks Just Figured Out How To Take Your Money Over Twitter
FILE - In this Friday, April 27, 2012, photo, a Starbucks drink waits for a customer to pick it up as barista Josh Barrow prepares another, in Seattle. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wants lawmakers to come together to resolve their political gridlock. From Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2013, to Friday, Oct. 11, 2013, the coffee chain is offering a free tall brewed coffee to any customer in the U.S. who buys another person a beverage at Starbucks. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
FILE - In this Friday, April 27, 2012, photo, a Starbucks drink waits for a customer to pick it up as barista Josh Barrow prepares another, in Seattle. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wants lawmakers to come together to resolve their political gridlock. From Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2013, to Friday, Oct. 11, 2013, the coffee chain is offering a free tall brewed coffee to any customer in the U.S. who buys another person a beverage at Starbucks. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

Buying someone a coffee is a small gesture of kindness, but you usually need to be with a friend to make it. However, starting Tuesday, Starbucks has a solution: Just pay for your faraway friend's coffee over Twitter.

The new program, appropriately called "Tweet a Coffee," works like this: To tweet a coffee at a friend, first you must sync your Starbucks account to your Twitter, which you can do here. Then, tweet at the person you want to buy a cup of joe, formatting the tweet "@Tweetacoffee to [your friend's Twitter handle]."

He or she should then receive a $5 gift card from you. Your friend can redeem it directly from his or her phone at participating Starbucks.

Right now you can only tweet-a-coffee in the U.S.:

Once the recipient views the gift, Starbucks emails the gift-giver the following message: "Thanks for sending [recipient] a $5.00 USD Starbucks Card eGift through the tweet-a-coffee program. Your friend has viewed it and will soon be enjoying their favorite beverage (and thinking what a nice person you are)."

Also, until Nov. 6, if you're one of the first 100,000 customers to tweet-a-coffee using a Visa card, you'll get a $5 gift card as well.

Mashable points out that Starbucks launched a similar program in 2011 with Facebook.

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