MCX's CurrentC Postpones Release Till Next Year

By Staff Writer

Aug 14, 2015 08:13 PM EDT

CurrectC, the future Apple Pay rival in US, will be out for shoppers by 2016 as announced by its CEO according to reports.

CurrentC, the brainchild of a consortium of big retailers known as Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), is still undergoing a couple of tweaks and its release this year was postponed to 2016 as confirmed by MCX CEO Brian Mooney in a Tuesday interview by ReCode. In fact, the company is yet to begin in a few weeks its public pilot of the app in Columbus, Ohio.

While being primarily backed by a couple of giant merchants including Walmart, Target, Kohl's, Dunkin' Donuts and Exxonis, CurrentC is designed to work on all types of smartphones and it enables shoppers pay with the app without a physical payment card or cash. Right now, CurrentC's beta users can only pay using one of three options: Gift cards, a store's private-label payment card or direct hookups with their checking accounts. Major credit cards aren't currently part of the offering partly because they carry higher transaction fees than the aforementioned options. So far, Mooney wouldn't say when or which ones would be supported in the future but they would, ReCode confirmed.

Meanwhile, Cnet added that MCX is viewed by analysts as a potential powerhouse in the mobile-payments competition. Again, this project is backed by some of the world's largest retailers, including Walmart, Target, Kohl's, and Best Buy. Previous statements prove that these retailers are not contented with third parties handling their mobile payment transactions, so they came up with MCX. It is planned that they will be utilizing CurrentC at their 110,000 locations around the US that collectively process over $1 trillion in annual transactions.

Meanwhile, behind this masterplan on the upcoming CurrentC, Apple, Samsung and Google have already been battling it out for mobile-payments supremacy. Apple Pay is now being used at over 700,000 locations in the U.S and its U.K. version has been released as well recently, Cult Of Mac reported.

Moreover, Cult Of Mac stressed that stopping Apple's momentum in this industry will be a tough task for the group of retailers that are planning to use loyalty cards and coupons to attract more shoppers.

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