Apple announced last fall that it would use Starbucks as one of its merchants for the mobile payment system Apple Pay. It took Starbucks until February to make it happen.

With the latest iPhone update of the Starbucks app, users will now be able to use Apple Pay to load money onto their Starbucks cards to purchase drinks and food items at Starbucks locations, 9to5Mac reports.

It will work a little differently than traditional Apple Pay merchants. Instead of going right into Apple Pay and paying for items at the register, users will instead continue to use their Starbucks app. The only difference is the loading method -- they will be able to load money onto their Starbucks card right within the app using Apple Pay. 

This will eliminate having to manage several different debit and credit cards and having to type them in each time they reload their cards.

By doing it this way, Starbucks visitors will still be able to get "stars" for each purchase they make. If they get a certain number of stars, depending on their membership level, they will get a free beverage or food item.

The fingerprint scanner on the Apple iPhone 6 and 6 Plus will make the transactions even faster. 

Apple might be able to find a way to provide support to pay for items using Apple Pay without having to use the Starbucks app, but in order to ensure customers keep getting their Starbucks rewards, this is the method they have to use.

Starbucks has allowed payments through smartphones for quite a while, but customers had to go into the app and load money to their cards whenever they were running low. Now with Apple Pay, they will be able to instantly reload their cards with just a touch of their finger using the TouchID sensor.

What do you think of the new app update for Starbucks? Leave a comment below and let us know.