CurrentC retailers’ conundrum: MCX contract expressly bars Apple Pay acceptance

“One week after its debut, Apple’s new mobile wallet is showing promise with consumers,” Mike Isaac reports for The New York Times. “Apple’s rivals in the payments industry, meanwhile, are scrambling to prevent it from being too successful.”

“Even before Apple Pay was announced, a coalition of retailers refused to accept it in their stores. More than 50 companies make up this group, the so-called Merchant Customer Exchange or MCX, including global retail giants like Walmart, Best Buy and Gap Inc,” Isaac reports. “The problem is that under the terms of their MCX contractual agreement, they are not supposed to accept competing mobile payments products like Apple Pay, according to multiple retailers involved with MCX, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. If these retailers break their contracts, they will face steep fines for doing so, these people said.”

“Since Apple Pay was introduced a week ago, consumers have tried to use it in MCX members like Rite Aid and CVS. So those businesses have disabled the technology that supports Apple Pay,” Isaac reports. “But the clock is ticking. If Apple Pay becomes a hit, MCX member retailers still waiting on CurrentC to begin could miss out on untold mobile payment transactions. Merchants also risk customer resentment if they continue to refuse Apple Pay. And if Apple Pay catches on, consumers may not be interested in a competing product.”

“‘These retailers are in a real jam,’ said Karen Webster, chief executive of Market Platform Dynamics, a payments industry consulting firm. ‘The last thing merchants want is ticking off their consumers over payment,’ Ms. Webster said,” Isaac reports. “Many say they believe that if any company is able to widely influence consumer behavior, it’s Apple. And if that is the case, MCX may have picked the wrong mobile wallet to back.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Stupid, shortsighted companies sign stupid, shortsighted contracts and they deserve to pay a price for their shortsighted stupidity.

MCX retailers: What’s the steeper price, the business lost from Apple’s well-heeled customers avoiding your stores and making it a point to patronize your competitors or the one-time penalty to get out of your stupid, shortsighted contract for a shitty QR code-based system that is doomed to fail anyway? Hint: It’s the former.

In just one week, Apple Pay has already facilitated more transactions than all other ‘contact less’ payment methods combined! (Which shows how much of a flop Google Wallet is – it released over three years ago on September 19, 2011!)

Boycott CVS and Rite Aid and any other company that willfully turns off NFC in a effort to block the vastly more secure, much more private, and far easier-to-use Apple Pay service.

• Email complaints to CVS Customer Relations here.

• Email complaints to Rite Aid Customer Relations here.

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