Dunkin' Donuts takes on Starbucks with new mobile payment and gifting app for iPhone

Mornings -- and long days -- are rough on people. To help get through them, some of us turn to glorious coffee. For many, that has, is, and will forever be Dunkin' Donuts. Looking to offer customers more choice and presumably keep up with those hipster kids at Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts has now released their mobile payment and gifting app, and packed it with helpful if familiar features.

Purchase, manage, and reload a Dunkin’ Donuts Card: Guests can purchase a new mobile Dunkin’ Donuts Card (selecting from multiple designs for many occasions), add money to an existing card, and view all previous card transactions. The Dunkin’ Mobile App supports American Express, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and PayPal.
Pay right from the app using a virtual Dunkin’ Donuts Card: Guests can purchase Dunkin’ Donuts products with the Dunkin’ App by simply tapping the mobile Dunkin’ Donuts Card and presenting the screen to the crew member to be scanned. Balances are updated immediately after purchase.
Send an mGift: Dunkin’ Donuts Cards can be sent to friends, family, or colleagues via email, text, or Facebook. Dunkin’ Donuts is now the only national coffee retailer to offer people all of these options for sending an mGift. Dunkin’ Donuts Cards can be sent in denominations between $2 and $100.
Locate the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts: A detailed restaurant locator makes it easy to find directions to and information about local Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants, including store hours, in-store Wi-Fi, drive-thru availability, and more.
Find nutritional information: The Dunkin’ App makes nutritional facts available for guests’ favorite Dunkin’ Donuts menu items.
Link to Dunkin’ Donuts’ social media communities: Dunkin' Donuts is actively engaged within leading social media channels, with more than 6.8 million Facebook fans and 160,000 Twitter followers. Easy links to “Like” Dunkin’ Donuts on Facebook or follow @DunkinDonuts on Twitter can be found in the “Social” section of the Dunkin’ App.

Sure, Dunkin' Donuts doesn't have a massive deal with Square but they still sell a ton of coffee and having an app that can potentially speed up the process of obtaining it is a good thing for everyone.

What's not good however is the fact the app is available only in the U.S. and some Dunkin' Donuts shops don't have the scanners needed to make it useful.