Posted on 08/12/2015 6:29:05 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Google and Samsung are gearing up to join Apple Pay in the battle to replace your wallet later this year, but another payments app backed by big retailers like Walmart may wait a little longer before entering primetime.
CurrentC, the payments app being created by a consortium of big retailers known as MCX, may not launch widely this year as originally planned, MCX CEO Brian Mooney told Re/code in an interview on Tuesday. The company will begin a public pilot of its app in Columbus, Ohio, in a few weeks and will not rush a wider rollout if the product is not ready, he said.
“This is a long game,” Mooney said. “Certainly going faster is always better — that’s not necessarily a debatable point. But we’re going to do it right.”
CurrentC — backed by several dozen big merchants including Walmart, Target, Kohl’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and Exxon — is designed to work on all types of smartphones and let shoppers pay with the app instead of a physical payment card or cash. But while Apple Pay and soon-to-launch services Android Pay and Samsung Pay let users pay using account information from traditional credit cards like Visa, MasterCard and Amex, CurrentC does not.
Instead, CurrentC’s beta users can only pay using one of three options: Gift cards, a store’s private-label payment card or direct hookups with their checking accounts. Mainstream credit cards carry higher transaction fees than these options, which is a big reason why they aren’t currently part of the offering. Mooney said CurrentC could add support for mainstream cards in the future, but wouldn’t say when or which ones.
MCX attracted a bunch of attention last year when two of its member merchants, CVS and Rite Aid, shut down support for Apple Pay after briefly accepting it as a payment option. On Tuesday, though, Rite Aid said it would start accepting Apple Pay later this month, and other MCX merchants such as Best Buy have announced plans to accept Apple Pay later this year. MCX members had signed exclusivity agreements which prevented them from accepting competitive wallets, but those expire this month — so it’s quite possible we will hear about other MCX retailers choosing to accept mobile wallets other than CurrentC.
Mooney said this turn of events is not surprising, but it’s clear the group hoped to have CurrentC live and able to get some “breathing room” before the exclusivity ended. Still, Mooney said he believes CurrentC will be one of the “great competitors” in the space. He cited the large footprint of the participating merchant group as one of the advantages the app may have. He also pointed to the inclusion of coupons and loyalty cards in the app and the likelihood the member merchants will put real marketing dollars behind the app, since they have a financial stake in its success.
Big hurdles remain. For starters, there are not a ton of high-profile success stories in the tech world that are a result of joint ventures. Plus, the company is going up against competitors in Apple, Google and Samsung that are strong technology organizations, each with its own advantages. One advantage they all have over CurrentC: They will be preloaded on millions of new phones over the next few years, while CurrentC will have to get people to download its app. And, like its competitors, CurrentC still has to create enough value to get people to ditch regular cards and cash in the first place.
Either way, none of this matters until CurrentC gets to market.
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Remember all the search engines before Google? That is how you will remember this product and Apple Pay and Google Pay.
There is something called Looppay that is going to blow all of these away. Currently, you need a fob on your keychain or a special case for your phone but starting with the Galaxy 6, it will be included in many (maybe all) Samsung phones.
The trick is that it physically acts as though you are swiping a card when all you are doing is pressing a button and holding it near the card reader. It tricks the card reader into thinking it has been swiped.
So here are the steps...
1.) Purchase hardware - Either the fob, a special phone case or a smart phone with the hardware baked in.
2.) Associate your debit cards, credit cards, gift cards, etc with your Looppay account.
3.) Open the Looppay app on your phone to pick which payment option you want to use for the current transaction.
4.) Press a button on your phone, case, fob, etc... and hold the device near a card reader.
The reader then thinks you actually swiped the card you chose.
It already works in 100% of businesses that accept credit cards. There is no lag in adoption rate as you wait for merchants to keep up to date.
I understand the squeamishness people have about encouraging a cashless economy. I understand that completely.
But I use Apple Pay because...if you are going to use a credit card, why not use a far more secure version of it with something like Apple Pay?
The “wow” factor is kind of funny, too. My wife and I went for a walk, and as is our custom, didn’t bring any money. We agreed after walking four miles, we would go to McDonalds for a vanilla soft serve, which is a great deal...only costs a buck, and they don’t give you a huge cone that melts all over you. Then we both realized at the same time we didn’t bring any money, and our faces fell a bit, when I brightened and said “But...I have my iPhone! We can use Apple Pay!”
The guy at the register was new, I think, and hadn’t seen anyone use it yet, and went “That was cool...what did you just do?”
I hope CurrentC dies a fast and painful death. The fact that it is making consumer’s lives a nightmare by disabling the convience of NFC at major retailers really pisses me off.
CurrentC is the worst implementation of smart phone payments I’ve ever heard. It will die a quick death.
The real issue is what will work securely with a single back end process.
Most NFC enabled terminals don’t care if you are paying with ApplePay or Google’s version. Ultimately, everyone will essentially have the same service working on different phones, watches or key fob devices.
I spent an hour this afternoon talking with a banking executive who said that NFC payments (smart phones, etc) will be ubiquitous by the end of 2016. The government mandated switch to the chip-enabled credit cards is forcing replacement of all point of sale terminals, so everyone is getting NFC-enabled terminals with the exception of the CurrentC-associated retailers.
And it can be read by other devices close by. . . and it turns out that Android devices are keeping the fingerprint scan in an insecure, unencrypted IMAGE file where it can be easily be found and used by any external hacker or unprivileged app. Definitely NOT secure. . . and this was every Android fingerprint scanning phone!
The magnetic card swipers are being phased out, nitzy as being insecure and easily hacked.
All merchants are going to have to have NFC capable devices by October of this year.
Fobs can be stolen. . . and have been discontinued. Looppay cases add a lot of bulk and weight to the phones you attach them to.
It takes these steps to use LoopPay:
Loop pay does not tokenize your transaction and merely transmits your current card details and shares all that with the merchant. It does nothing to make your data more secure or more private. There are NO private agreements with the card issuing banks to establish such tokenization which will increase security and end card and ID theft or credit card theft. You still allow purchase tracking at the merchant.
Here's what it takes to use ApplePay on an iPhone:
And here's what it takes to use ApplePay on an Apple Watch:
The transaction is completed between you and your bank without involving Apple, the merchant never sees your data or your card number, or anything personal, even your name, and the data transmitted never repeats so it cannot be intercepted and re-used by a man-in-the-middle attack, and is a single use tokenization and cannot be re-used. . . so the transaction is completed securely and anonymously to the merchant.
Both devices are extremely secure and neither keeps any of the user's fingerprints in images or passcodes in open files anywhere on the devices for comparison purposes. Remove the Apple Watch from your wrist and it cannot be used. The iPhone, without your fingerprint cannot be used. . . and a copy of your fingerprint will not work. Nor will your detached finger. It has to be a living finger with your fingerprint, it actually reads the subcutaneous ridges beneath the fingerprint, not the fingerprint itself.
Not so on LoopPay. Sorry, nitzy. LoopPay is a poor substitute.
This is a fail before it even gets out the door.
Here’s how CurrentC works: You enter your bank account information and social security number. At checkout, you scan a QR code, then hold up your phone for the cashier to scan another QR code. The CurrentC app collects, and shares with paying clients, your financial information, location, and for some reason no one has ever adequately explained, health information.
It is inferior to Apple Pay, and anything suggested by Google or Samsung, in every conceivable way.
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