Deeper Dive: Apple Pay vs. CurrentC

CurrentC, the mobile payment service under development from a retailer consortium known as Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX, has been getting a lot of attention in the past week. First MCX members CVS and Rite Aid disabled their NFC payment systems to block the rival ApplePay mobile payment service, and then hackers stole the emails of CurrentC users. And despite all this publicity, CurrentC is still in pilot mode.



CurrentC is scheduled to go into full rollout mode early next year. There are no guarantees of its long-term success, but it should hardly be counted out, either. MCX is hardly some ragtag bunch of mom-and-pop stores. In addition to CVS and Rite Aid, other members include Wal-Mart, Best Buy and TargetApplePay is clearly here to stay, but there may be room for more than one player on the automated mobile payment court.