For a while, it seemed as though mobile payments might well have had a serious problem taking off thanks to the members of the Merchant Customer Exchange, a bloc of major stores ranging from Best Buy to Walmart that were adamantly opposed to taking the major new mobile payment systems in favor of the MCX’s own design, CurrentC. But reports of breaks in the bloc started emerging not so long ago, and a new break has just recently emerged in Rite Aid pharmacies.
It was only nine months ago when Rite Aid made its position clear, shutting off its credit card terminals from Apple Pay access in order to support the MCX project. Now, new reports suggest that contractual obligations that kept Rite Aid from taking Apple Pay and the like have expired—or at least some of these have—and that frees up retailers to take other payment forms. CurrentC, meanwhile, is at last report still forthcoming by the end of this year, but no clear release date has been set.
Rite Aid wouldn’t offer specific comment, but spokeswoman Ashley Flower noted that Rite Aid was still a part of the MCX, and was ready to accept CurrentC. Whenever it actually showed up.
This is perhaps the biggest problem in a nutshell. Apple Pay has already been on the scene the better part of a year now, making huge inroads and new agreements that allow it to be taken. Google Wallet, Android Pay, Samsung Pay and a host of other options are either following or will be following soon enough.
It’s not, therefore, that surprising that Rite Aid got sick of waiting for Godot and instead decided to offer customers access to payment methods that could actually be used. It’s actually quite surprising that the elements of the MCX waited as long as they did, or have in some cases; with other stores able to get an edge in the market just by offering a different payment method, it should have been the kind of thing that the MCX elements would have wanted to shut down quickly. However, with CurrentC still out of the game, it’s easy to wonder just how long the various other elements of the MCX will continue to abide.
The MCX desperately needs to get CurrentC into the field before its member organizations continue to dissent and bring in alternate payment strategies. Otherwise it will continue to lose ground, and by extension, lose customers to businesses that will offer the payment methods customers desire most.