Hadley Malcolm

USA TODAY

In a bid to boost participation, Starbucks is making a big change to its customer loyalty program: It will give rewards based on dollars spent rather than number of visits.

Starting in April, customers in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico will earn two "stars" for every $1 spent, rather than one star per visit under the current program, Starbucks announced Monday.

Currently, customers with "gold" status have to visit 12 times to earn a free food or drink item. Under the new program, those customers will have to earn 125 stars to get a free reward.

Most customers spend around $5 with each visit, said Matt Ryan, global chief strategy officer. At that rate, a customer would still need to visit about 12.5 times, or spend a little more than $60, before earning a free reward.

Starbucks executives said on a conference call that the change has been the most requested update to the company's rewards program. Yet, the new program benefits customers who spend more — and many of those who are partial to more basic, less expensive items took to social media to say they weren't happy about the switch.

The company says the goal is to get more people to sign up for the loyalty program and ultimately increase store sales and profit. Currently, there are more than 11 million active members.

The new program only has two levels instead of three, which means customers will reach gold status faster, and monthly "double star days" will also help customers rack up rewards at a quicker rate.

"Because they earn more, they’ll spend more," said Scott Maw, chief financial officer for Starbucks. Starbucks loyalty members already spend three times as much as nonmembers and visit more frequently.

The coffee company says that fewer than one in six of its more than 75 million monthly visitors are loyalty members, pointing to the potential to attract more customers to the program.

Starbucks also hopes the change will help avoid a common practice in stores today referred to as "transaction splitting," in which customers ask baristas to ring up multiple items separately in order to get more rewards. Starbucks estimates about 1% of all transactions are from customers who request their orders be rung up individually, slowing down traffic in stores.

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Customers will still be able to earn stars on Starbucks grocery purchases too, but the number of stars rewarded will correlate with the retail price.