“The mobile payments space is about to get more crowded: CurrentC, a platform backed by some of the country’s biggest retailers, will launch in the next few months and give Apple, Google and Samsung added competition,” Martyn Williams reports for IDG News Service. “Few details are known about the service, but it is expected to merge payments and loyalty benefits and will give retailers additional insight into the spending habits of customers who are members.”
“Merchant Content Exchange (MCX), the operator of the service, plans to make it available to the public in mid 2015, but in a single market at first,” Williams reports. “CurrentC got a higher profile in October last year when pharmacy chains CVS and Rite Aid, both MCX members, stopped accepting Apple Pay a week after it launched. At the time it was widely interpreted as an attempt to block the rival service while CurrentC was getting off the ground.”
“With CurrentC, a user points their phone camera at a one-time barcode displayed on a retailer terminal to trigger payment,” Williams reports. “That’s not perhaps as easy as NFC payments, which can be accomplished by bringing a phone near a reader.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: A poor approximation that vaguely resembles something Apple’s already been offering for quite some time. Sounds perfect for Android settlers who are used to trading away their privacy via inferior technology for nothing much in return. Too bad fragmandroid settlers don’t like to spend money. Seems like a poor foundation upon which to build a customer tracking system masquerading as a payment service.
CurrentC. The mobile payment system for the ignorati.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “KingMel” for the heads up.]
