

Apple Pay Runs Afoul of MCX, a Group with a Rival Product - mountaineer
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/technology/apple-pay-runs-afoul-of-a-rival.html?_r=0

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drivingmenuts
What's really going to be interesting is to see what CurrentC's plans are for
getting onto the iPhone. Apple has a history of not allowing certain products,
if they conflict with Apple's plans for monetization.

So, CurrentC might work on Android, but ... it's Android, not the iPhone,
which is the one that generates the buzz in the US.

Plus, there's the whole _not-actually-having-a-product_ thing when Apple has a
product _in use_ ,

I suspect that CurrentC will wind up being a negotiating tool, more than an
actual product.

Which is kind of funny, because Apple doesn't actually have to negotiate here.

~~~
toomuchtodo
CurrentC is the holding the shotgun to their feet yelling at Apple, "Don't
make me do it!"

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veidr
This is a really interesting battle, because MCX's CurrenC looks like an
_utterly horrible piece of shit_ that was almost certainly doomed to fail even
if Apple had never come up with anything in this space.

[http://www.imore.com/depth-look-currentc-and-personal-
data-t...](http://www.imore.com/depth-look-currentc-and-personal-data-they-
want-collect)

~~~
soylentcola
What it is is annoying and disheartening. When Google Wallet came out I wasn't
able to use it for anything but loyalty cards since carrier versions of phones
that normally supported it were gimped in order to stall Wallet's adoption
while the carriers tried to develop their own system.

About a year ago I got a Nexus 5 and have been using Wallet's tap-to-pay ever
since. It's pretty convenient to pull out my phone, flash the loyalty card,
and wave it over the POS terminal. I get a little receipt scrolling up the
screen and a copy is emailed to me.

Now Apple has joined the party and with the two biggest smartphone OSes
supporting tap-to-pay (and with implementations that both work on standard POS
terminals with NFC) it looked like there would finally be some push to get
support from retailers that hadn't updated their terminals yet. Seemed like a
win-win. Both iOS and Android fans would have a convenient and more secure way
to pay for things without any of the lock-in or incompatibility that normally
comes along when Apple and Google are competing in the same space.

...but no. These guys are taking a page from the carrier playbook and
deliberately disabling something that has been working for years just as it's
gaining popularity outside the early-adopter/techie space. It's the sort of
thing that bums me out and I wish it didn't affect so many retailers so I
could participate in my own ineffective (but satisfying) boycott. As it
stands, I guess I'll just go back to the plastic because there's no way I'm
installing this CurrenC nonsense.

It would have been nicer if they competed by building their own NFC
implementation that also worked on common hardware (a-la Wallet and Pay) so
users could choose to use it if they wanted. Maybe they could offer coupons or
some other reason people might decide to opt in. At least that would be
competing in a way that didn't hurt overall adoption. Instead they went the
route of scumbags like cell carriers.

