US retailer-owned mobile payments consortium MCX is to test its CurrentC mobile wallet in stores next month, Bloomberg reports, adding: “MCX expects to formally introduce the CurrentC app some time in the third quarter.” MCX unveiled the CurrentC brand in September 2014 and confirmed to NFC World it would launch in a “mid-sized market” in April... More
Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX)
MCX member Target to support Apple Pay
US discount retail giant Target has become the latest member of retailer-led consortium MCX to reveal its intentions to support Apple Pay, following Best Buy’s announcement that it will roll out support for the NFC mobile payments service this year... More
MCX appoints interim CEO after Best Buy announces support for Apple Pay
MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson has left the retailer-led consortium to “pursue other opportunities” in the same week it was announced that founder member Best Buy will roll out support for rival mobile payments service Apple Pay later this year... More
MCX confirms it will launch CurrentC this summer in a “mid-sized market”
Retailer owned mobile payments consortium MCX has confirmed to NFC World that it will launch its CurrentC mobile wallet in an unspecified mid-sized US market soon, following the announcement that founder member Best Buy will begin to accept rival mobile payments service Apple Pay in its stores later this year... More
MCX member Best Buy to accept Apple Pay across the US
US retail giant Best Buy, a founder member of retailer-led consortium MCX which requires members to exclusively support its own yet-to-launch mobile payments service, has announced that it will accept Apple Pay NFC payments in its stores “later this year”... More
PayPal explains why it’s buying mobile wallet provider Paydiant
“What Paydiant has is a clarity of focus on mobile and how large merchants need to utilise mobile to connect with their customers — they’re a small company doing that very successfully with some really cool brands,” Anuj Nayar, senior director of global initiatives at PayPal, has told NFC World as the payment giant prepares to complete its acquisition of the payments platform provider for a reported US$280m... More
PayPal to buy MCX supplier Paydiant
Paypal is to acquire Paydiant, a white label mobile payments specialist and developer of a platform that allows retailers to incorporate payment, loyalty and offers functionality into their own apps... More
MCX CEO confirms plans to include bank cards in CurrentC wallet
MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson has outlined more of the consortium’s plans for its CurrentC mobile wallet in a keynote presentation at the Money2020 event in Las Vegas, confirming that banks will be able to add open loop payment cards to the service when it goes live in 2015... More
NFC World celebrates its sixth birthday
NFC World is six years old today and we are celebrating with a top 50,000 website ranking on Alexa.com, 129,493 unique visitors in October and a new rate card designed to make advertising on NFC World the single most effective way for mobile commerce suppliers to reach new customers in the year ahead... More
MCX to open up “in months”
The exclusivity rule that prevents members of MCX from accepting other mobile payments services in their stores will expire in “months, not years,” CEO Dekkers Davidson has told Re/Code... More
Target includes Apple Pay in mobile app
MCX member Target has integrated Apple Pay into its mobile app but is not accepting payments via Apple Pay in its stores, the retailer has told NFC World+... More
MCX prepares to open its wallet to NFC and bank cards
MCX is now open to supporting both NFC and Bluetooth Low Energy for payments and is in conversation with credit card issuers about opening up its CurrentC mobile wallet to payment cards, CEO Dekkers Davidson and COO Scott Rankin have told reporters... More
MCX suffers email address data breach
“Within the last 36 hours, we learned that unauthorized third parties obtained the email addresses of some of our CurrentC pilot program participants and individuals who had expressed interest in the app,” retailer-owned mobile payments consortium MCX has revealed... More
MCX responds to criticism
“Much of the conversation the past couple of days has been misinformed about the product MCX is developing, so we’d like to set the record straight,” the retailer-owned consortium says in a detailed blog post outlining its position and plans for its CurrentC mobile wallet that has been published in response to criticism of the decision taken by member merchants CVS and Rite Aid to pull support for NFC payments... More
A million consumers sign up for Apple Pay in first 72 hours
Apple Pay saw more than one million card activations within 72 hours of launch and is already the leading NFC payments player in the US, Apple CEO Tim Cook has revealed during the Wall Street Journal’s WSJDLive event. Cook also outlined future growth plans for the service, including a potential partnership with Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba. More
US payments body hits out at Rite Aid and CVS
“The decision by CVS and Rite Aid to block mobile payments services like Apple Pay, Google Wallet and Softcard is anti-consumer and anti-competitive,” says US-based trade body the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), following the MCX consortium members’ decision to stop accepting NFC payments... More
MCX retailers turn off NFC payments
US pharmacy chains Rite Aid and CVS, both members of the MCX retailer-owned consortium which is due to launch its CurrentC mobile payment service in 2015, have stopped accepting NFC payments in the wake of the launch of Apple Pay. More
No Apple Pay for Walmart, Best Buy
Owners of Apple’s new NFC-enabled smartwatch and iPhones will not be able to make Apple Pay mobile payments in either Walmart or Best Buy, the Wall Street Journal reports... More
Retailer-owned payments venture MCX unveils CurrentC brand
Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), the mobile payments venture co-owned by US retail chains with collective revenues of more than US$1 trillion annually, has announced that its payments, loyalty and offers platform is to be called CurrentC — and provided the first details of how the service will work when it rolls out to 110,000 merchant locations across the US in 2015... More
Has NFC missed the mobile payments boat or will the industry rise to the cloud payments challenge?
In the April issue of Mobile Wallet Outlook the NFC World team examines why NFC is failing to gain traction in the mobile payments market, analyzes the range of cloud-based options available for those seeking to deliver mass market mobile wallets — and sets out in detail how MCX’s barcode and cloud-based wallet will work, when it’s likely to launch and who is already using the same approach today. More