A bigger crack in the MCX/CurrentC pay wall

[deckeda]

Best Buy adopts Apple Pay despite being an MCX partner. One of only two retailer to break ranks, but a pretty large one at that.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/04/27/...c-and-mcx/

It's almost May. By this Fall, when NFC and more cards become chipped, the retail pay landscape will be quite different.

[cbelt3]

I don't understand the insistence at banning one to embrace the other at the merchant level. Have dual functionality readers and Bob's your uncle. Merchants need to be payment system neutral... who cares where the money comes from, as long as it shows up !

Payment system vendors can offer cost reductions and whatnot to attract customers into buying their hardware. Of course eventually someone will build a phone with both devices....

[sekker]

MCX CEO was replaced this week.

[Ken Sp.]

MCX was formed as a consortium to try to be a credit card alternative where retailers would not pay the credit card bank fees. MCX needed the retailers to be united to stand against the credit card companies.
MCX was DOA because they would have required us to give direct access to a bank account and our Social security number. No one I know is willing to authorize this info due to data theft possibilities.

cbelt3 wrote:
I don't understand the insistence at banning one to embrace the other at the merchant level. Have dual functionality readers and Bob's your uncle. Merchants need to be payment system neutral... who cares where the money comes from, as long as it shows up !

Payment system vendors can offer cost reductions and whatnot to attract customers into buying their hardware. Of course eventually someone will build a phone with both devices....

[deckeda]

cbelt3 wrote:
I don't understand the insistence at banning one to embrace the other at the merchant level. ...

It was meant primarily as a temporary ban, to give MCX an introductory advantage so that people and hardware makers would later stick with it from inertia, which is a fairly horrible way to "innovate," especially when betting against Apple.

MCX' plan is further odd in that very few of anyone is paying this way today, so their small slice is even smaller. But none of it consumer-centric, MCX is a marketing vacuum also geared to plaster customers with contact data. Huge potential privacy and security nightmare, from concept to technological design to execution.