MCX Hits Pause on CurrentC Platform

DALLAS — Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) postponed the rollout of its nationwide CurrentC mobile payment platform.

As CSNews Online previously reported, CurrentC was supposed to be fully rolled out in the third quarter of 2015 after completing a test in Columbus, Ohio, but that did not materialize.

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. However, plans for the mobile payment platform changed when one the biggest retailers in the consortium, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., decided to implement its own Walmart Pay mobile payment platform at its stores instead, reported Finextra.

Instead, MCX has decided to shift its focus to developing relationships with major banks.

“Utilizing unique feedback from the marketplace and our Columbus pilot, MCX has named the decision to concentrate more heavily in the immediate term on other aspects of our business, including working with financial institutions, like our partnership with Chase, to enable and scale mobile payment solutions,” MCX CEO Brian Mooney told the news outlet. “As part of this transition, MCX will postpone a nationwide rollout of its CurrentC application. As MCX has said many times, the mobile payments space is just beginning to take shape — it is early in a long game. MCX’s owner-members remain committed to our future.”

MCX has also trimmed 60 jobs from its workforce, the news source reported.