“With Apple Pay becoming ever more widely adopted by card issuers and more widely accepted by retailers, mobile payments was bound to see new entrants. The latest to emerge is CurrentC, backed by a consortium of retailers such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy It will go live sometime in the middle of the year,” Mark Hibben writes for Seeking Alpha. “Does CurrentC pose a threat Apple Pay? No, it’s hardly credible competition.”
“In effect, the CurrentC app user (there’ll be apps for iOS and Android) is authorizing the CurrentC consortium, Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) to make an ACH transfer from the customer’s account to the member retailer’s bank. So MCX has to have stored your bank account information, and is involved with every transaction the customer makes with CurrentC,” Hibben writes. “In every important respect – ease of use, privacy and security – CurrentC is inferior to Apple Pay.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple Pay roadkill.
As we wrote earlier this week:
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.
Related articles:
MCX’s convoluted ‘CurrentC’ payment system to test in single market in mid-2015 – April 7, 2015
Apple Pay vs. MCX’s CurrentC: Convenience vs. greed – November 14, 2014
Apple Pay vastly superior and much better positioned than MCX’s CurrentC – November 1, 2014
CurrentC, MCX retailers’ answer to Apple Pay, faces doom – October 31, 2014