I really don't understand what the companies involved with MCX are thinking. They build an app that is going in the opposite direction of where the market is heading and limit the amount of payments they accept.<p>I was in line at 7-11 at my university, where an girl was trying to use the currentc app. She was 2 people ahead of me, when I went up to pay she was still trying to pay with the app. At first her screen was to dim, and the scanner would not read the QR code. Eventually she was able to pay, but I was already long gone by that time. If you look on the google play store it has a rating of 1.1 starts.<p>This is straight from its website,"Merchant Customer Exchange is the only merchant-owned mobile commerce network built to streamline the customer shopping experience across all major retail verticals."<p>With an app that rates 1.1 stars and no improvement, I don't think it cares about the shopping experience, and people will see this eventually.
In Australia retailers have supported NFC in the form of Visa's payWave and Mastercard's PayPass for years now and I've got to say, it's fantastic compared to the experience in the US.<p>Walk into a supermarket/retailer/cinema/restaurant in Melbourne and payment is as simple as waving your card at the terminal. If the purchase is less than ~$100 you don't need to enter a PIN and don't need to sign anything (we outlawed signatures for domestic payments mid last year). It's just done. Visa/Mastercard/banks generally cover any fraudulent purchases using the system so you don't need to worry too much about fraud.<p>In addition to this, since the US tech companies generally don't appear to have cared about the rest of the world until now, our banks have provided us with contactless payment apps for our phones and unlike the numerous standards being developed in the US, the banks' apps work with the existing payWave/PayPass systems that are already supported.<p>The reason I'm bringing this up is to show just how behind the US is when it comes to payments. I'm currently living in the Bay Area and the only places I've been able to successfully complete a purchase using a contactless payment method are Office Depot and Whole Foods. Most fast food places don't accept it, most retailers don't accept it, most businesses in general don't accept it. In Melbourne at least nearly everywhere accepts it, from coffee shops to supermarkets to tech retailers.<p>Even the US's move to EMV is backwards. The country has the second highest credit card fraud rate in the world yet when moving to a "more secure" system, signatures are still being retained as "authentication" or "authorization" despite being literally attached to the back of the card.<p>The US is fantastic when it comes to technology but when it comes to banking and payments it's incredibly dated and behind.
Between the privacy concerns and the fact that it's ACH only, it sounds like it has a tremendous benefit for retailers.... and precisely none for me.
I believe CurrentC's (Paydiant's) QR code tokenization works the same as you've described Apple Pay tokenization - the merchant POS does not see any payment info other than a one-time-use token.<p>This was another decent teardown of Paydiant's Subway app - but it looks like someone high up has had some of the code redacted :)
<a href="http://randywestergren.com/reverse-engineering-the-subway-android-app/" rel="nofollow">http://randywestergren.com/reverse-engineering-the-subway-an...</a><p>Functionally, it looks like CurrentC only has two advantages over *Pays - loyalty integration and big box retailer backing. Not likely enough, but will be interesting to see how it plays out in the lower end market where a flagship device is not required...
Just the name ("CurrentC") seems like it's going to lead to numerous Who's-On-First kinds of interactions...<p>A: "Do you take CurrentC?"<p>B: "Of course we take currency."<p>A: [Pulls out CurrentC app.]<p>B: "Oh, no. We don't do that."<p>Might do better if it sounded distinct when spoken. Like "Apple Pay."<p>A: "Do you take Apple Pay?"<p>B: "No, we only accept payments in currency, not in fruit."<p>A: [Pulls out CurrentC app.]<p>B: "We don't take that, either."<p>[Audience laughter, applause, and scene.]
"...retail customer's money is on the line in the event of fraud..." is a good point that may just slide by. The fact that corporations have significantly moved to evading any kind of responsibility through various means from regulatory capture to force arbitration and market monopoly; it strikes me that the factor of risk to the retail consumer aspect will play a huge role. It is a huge competitive disadvantage, to both not develop something well and with vigilance towards security like Apple Pay is, while also then setting in place a framework for conveying to customers that "if there is fraud because of our poorly designed and developed system, we are going to duck and weave like champions".<p>Do you want to keep away customers, i.e., revenue, because that's how you keep away customers.
Did more research - it seems like this article is wrong about fraud liability (in addition to QR tokenization). There are plenty of things wrong with CurrentC, no need to make stuff up...<p><i>To further protect CurrentC™ consumers, our zero-liability policy protects consumers in the event unauthorized or fraudulent charges are made to their checking account as a result of unauthorized ACH transactions processed through BIM.</i><p><a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mcx-adds-bim-guaranteed-ach-170000793.html" rel="nofollow">http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mcx-adds-bim-guaranteed-ach-17...</a>
The article seem to suggest that your phone requires a working internet connection in order to make a payment. This seems like a huge limitation compared to Apple Pay (and presumably Android Pay?), which does not.