
CurrentC Ends Beta Tests, Will Deactivate Accounts - taylorbuley
https://consumerist.com/2016/06/07/currentc-ends-beta-tests-will-deactivate-accounts-later-this-month/
======
coleca
I'm in awe that some sales person was able to sell Walmart, Target, BestBuy,
CVS and all these other stingy retailers on a payment system like
CurrentC/MCX. Any B2B enterprise focused startup would be wise to find and
poach these guys.

That aside, I have no sympathy for MCX's demise. These guys started out trying
to charge $30k just to view their PowerPoint deck. $1m to join the consortium
and get a board seat. This may seem like pennies to these billion dollar
valuation startups, but retailers are a different breed not willing to spend a
dime on anything that hasn't been proven.

At my last retail job I was was pitched by these guys (without the PPT fee)
and had a hard time keeping a straight face when they said they wanted the
consumers to give up their bank account info right after the Target breach,
but somehow they found a whole bunch of backers.

~~~
rosalinekarr
> I'm in awe that some sales person was able to sell Walmart, Target, BestBuy,
> CVS and all these other stingy retailers on a payment system like
> CurrentC/MCX.

It's not as hard as you'd think. I previously worked for a start up that sold
Walmart on a POS system that was absolutely terrible (the codebase didn't even
have any tests). The big retailers like Walmart have a sort of "throw money at
everything and see what sticks" approach to technology. They regularly sign
contracts to try out new tech but only in one or two stores. If it works well,
they scale up to more stores, but that almost never happens.

~~~
Retric
This seems like a completely reasonable approach. New IT at scale is often
more of a risk than a benefit for companies like Walmart.

------
chillacy
A company pursuing what's best for itself instead of what's best for consumers
(I was going to say customers, but in this case it seems like Walmart is the
customer) and creates a bad product. Glad to see it didn't take off. Even
credit cards are more convenient and come with anti-fraud features.

~~~
FireBeyond
Oh yeah. When you installed the CurrentC app it requested permissions for your
phone log, text log, and even your health data! Just outright 'data mining'.

------
PhoenixWright
I was part of a meeting at retailerX where a VP or mid-level manager that was
representing the company at CurrentC gave a talk. As she told it things were
going swimmingly and she talked about her lead and how she and retailerX were
respected by the other retailers for their IT prowess. After that meeting I
knew CurrentC was dead. This lady was chosen to lead the project and most mid-
level managers at retailerX were completely incompetent. RetailerXs IT
department is staffed by H1-Bs and get things done through brute force. If
that's the best they could find they were in trouble from the start.

Wal-Mart made the wise decision of going solo and launching their own app a
little bit later. From what I hear Wal-Mart labs has a great staff.

------
elahd
Does this mean CVS will re-enable Apple Pay on their CC readers?

~~~
gst
It's not Apple Pay but all of NFC. Before CurrentC CVS accepted all types of
NFC payments (Apple Pay, Google Wallet, NFS credit cards), but none of those
works anymore.

~~~
tuxracer
Hopefully whatever technology Samsung is using to power Samsung Pay catches
on. It sends a magnetic field where you normally swipe your card. That
"tricks" the machine into thinking a card was physically swiped. The terminal
doesn't need to support NFC and it works even if NFC is turned off (as is the
case for CVS).

~~~
gst
This won't be a long-term solution as the magnetic stripe is a legacy
technology that's being phased out. Lots of US merchants already require the
chip (if available on the card) instead of a magnetic stripe, and almost all
European merchants only accept chip cards (and don't even have a reader
anymore for the magnetic stripe).

------
skywhopper
I'd love to hear an actual beta tester's experience with this app. I shop at a
local CVS a lot because of its location, but their ever-more-complicated
schemes to get me addicted to couponing (I _guess_ that's their goal, but
regardless it ain't gonna happen) may eventually be enough incentive to get me
to drive an extra mile to go to a store that doesn't actively try to waste my
time. I seriously considered not returning the time the cashier walked around
the counter, and took me over to a kiosk in the aisle to scan my card, wait 30
seconds for several coupons to print, then pick out and tear apart the one
that was going to save me 25 cents on my two-liter of soda. This with people
in line. No, it's not worth it to me or to you, surely! Luckily it hasn't
happened again.

What I read about CurrentC's process reminded me of that debacle. I'm
genuinely curious who enjoys this stuff or what the consumer theory is behind
making shopping at a convenience store more of a hassle.

~~~
lando2319
Just read the reviews on the Google play store. It's not pretty.

------
QuercusMax
I've had mixed success with Android Pay; the one time I needed to use it
(forgot my wallet) it worked at Trader Joe's.

Most of the time, though, I spend 30 seconds trying to get things lined up
properly between my Nexus 6 and the sensor, then give up and use plastic
instead.

~~~
r00fus
ApplePay on my 2 year old iPhone is very reliable. The only problem with
contactless payments is the fact you still have to sign the receipt and tap
through the purchase.

Completely defeats the convenience of new tech.

Who's to blame for that cluster?

~~~
bnastic
In the UK Apple Pay is everywhere. And you don't have to do anything, just tap
the phone. No receipts, no signing.

~~~
rconti
What's amazing is how often people are shocked by it when I use it. It's,
what, almost 2 years old? I get it when I'm at a gas station in the middle of
nowhere in New Zealand, but just a day or two ago I used it at some retailer
in the SF Bay Area and they had never seen anyone use their phone to pay
before.

It still sucks that you can't rely on it being at most places, though, because
it means you still have to carry a credit card or cash if you're out for a run
or bike ride and might want to grab a snack.

~~~
r00fus
I put a $20 bill in my phone case.

------
massysett
Meanwhile Apple Pay is not doing much better. I tried it a couple of times
with my iPhone. I had trouble getting it to work and it was definitely more
troublesome than getting out a credit card. It would be enormously useful if I
could use it to pay online merchants, which would keep me from entering
address and payment info on my iPhone. But I have seen no such merchants and
do not know if such an option is even possible at this point.

~~~
MarkSweep
While Apple Pay might not be as convenient and simple as a world that only
swipes credit cards, the spread of chip readers makes Apple Pay look
comparatively convenient. First you do the dance of trying to figure out if
the chip reader is actually enabled. Then for a lot of readers you have to
wait a really long time with your card in the reader. And it's easy to mess up
and pull out the card too early. With Apple Pay you just feel a little silly
smacking your phone or watch up against a wireless reader.

~~~
jonknee
The chip readers are such a disaster. I can't believe they are so slow.

~~~
narrowrail
What's interesting is that the ISO standard for NFC is derived from ISO 7816
standard for chip cards; and, NFC has to transmit at 13.56MHz while chips have
a wired connection. I'm not sure what is going on there exactly, but it
doesn't make much sense (at least before diggin' deeply into the specs).

~~~
sitharus
It depends a lot on the terminal. I've been using a chip card for over 6 years
now, and here in New Zealand we use cards for almost every payment.

The first generation of chip terminals were horribly slow, they took far
longer than a swipe. They also wore out really fast - the spring contacts
would stop making proper contact with the card leading to failed transactions.

The current generation (fourth I think) is much faster and more reliable. They
can read the chip faster than contactless, there's still the PIN entry though.

I'm not sure how it is in the US but here most retailers rent their terminals
so get reasonably regular upgrades.

~~~
narrowrail
I don't know how deep this rabbit hole you want to go down, but the speed of
the transaction also depends on the actual chip in the card (ASIC), and the
transceiver in the terminal. These chips do have to perform a cyptographic
transaction while using power from the terminal. I wonder how much filth on
the card causes poor connectivity(?). The max data rate for NFC is 848kbps
(IIRC); not sure about contact smartcards, but it should be faster than that.

------
dang
Url changed from [http://www.recode.net/2016/6/8/11888834/mcx-currentc-
payment...](http://www.recode.net/2016/6/8/11888834/mcx-currentc-payments-app-
shuts-down), which points to this, with added linkbait and gloating.

