CurrentC to Begin Rollout in Third Quarter

DALLAS — Merchant Customer Exchange’s (MCX) CurrentC mobile payment platform will be formally introduced in the third quarter of this year, a spokeswoman for home improvement retailer Lowe’s Cos. told Bloomberg.

Dallas-based MCX was founded in 2012 by a consortium of retailers, including 7-Eleven Inc., in an effort to curtail high interchange fees allegedly charged by credit and debit card providers.

Scott Rankin, MCX’s chief operating officer, confirmed in an email to the news outlet that CurrentC will begin public tests this year and is “making good progress” in bringing the app to market.

As CSNews Online reported in September, CurrentC was expected to have a national rollout early in 2015. This date was perhaps delayed somewhat by a hacking incident CurrentC suffered during early tests in 2014. MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson however stressed that only email information was stolen from customers, not personal information, such as credit card numbers.

Once launched, CurrentC is expected to be a prominent competitor to already established mobile payment solutions, such as those offered by Apple and Google.

"CurrentC will offer customers a simpler, faster, secure way to checkout at their favorite merchants," Davidson said late last year. "At full scale, CurrentC will be accepted in more than 110,000 merchant locations across the country, giving consumers unmatched access to their favorite retailers. It will also offer innovative features and benefits, such as merchant loyalty programs and instant coupon savings, all stored on the phone and available right at the point-of-sale."