CurrentC Concludes Beta Testing…But What’s Next?
It wasn’t so long ago that CurrentC laid off a substantial quantity of its staff following a general shift in the market, but now, another milestone has arrived for CurrentC, and the outlook is somewhat grim.
The Columbus, Ohio beta testing of CurrentC has concluded, and at the end of June, the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) will be canceling accounts.
The problem is that no one seems quite sure as yet just where CurrentC will go from here.
Reports from The Consumerist note that the MCX isn’t folding, necessarily, but CurrentC users are pretty much cut off from the app, and no plans currently exist to actually bring the service anywhere else.
CurrentC’s idea was unusual if noteworthy in its own right; instead of turning to near-field communications (NFC) systems, CurrentC instead generated quick response (QR) codes that cashiers could scan at the payment terminal.
Unusual enough, but not quite enough to make it a worthwhile opponent.
Given that a large portion of support for CurrentC is now gone—or at least co-opted by other payment firms—it’s a safe bet that CurrentC isn’t going to go any wider than it already has.
After all, what point is there in releasing yet another mobile payment system when so many potential users already have their weapon of choice in mind?
Sure, individual retailers are taking a stab at it, offering extra rewards in exchange for the reams of customer data this will generate—which, when run through a big data analytics system provides actionable insight about stocking, hours of operation and more—but CurrentC would have to draw all its members together to offer a similar program.
With so many MCX members—Walmart, Best Buy and Target for starters—either supporting other services or planning their own, it might be a difficult proposition to pull them in.
With minimal support, a concluded beta, and no plans to speak of for expansion, it looks as though CurrentC is effectively dead.
That’s not to say it officially is, or that it couldn’t come back as something else later, but for right now, one of the first big casualties of the mobile payments market seems to be CurrentC, the payment system that couldn’t rally enough support fast enough to be effective.