Have companies not yet worked out that trying to go against Apple rarely seems to work out? If not, they may be learning quickly — with Apple Pay rival CurrentC reportedly delaying its arrival yet again, while laying off 30 of its staff.
Hardly a ringing endorsement, is it?
In a statement from the CEO of MCX (the company behind CurrentC), it was noted that: “Utilizing unique feedback from the marketplace and our Columbus pilot, MCX has made a decision to concentrate more heavily in the immediate term on other aspects of our business including working with financial institutions, like our partnership with Chase, to enable and scale mobile payment solutions.”
“As part of this transition, MCX will postpone a nationwide rollout of its CurrentC application. As MCX has said many times, the mobile payments space is just beginning to take shape – it is early in a long game. MCX’s owner-members remain committed to our future.”
While MCX certainly isn’t calling it quits for certain, a spokesperson told TechCrunch that it is focused on the “long game” in payments. This isn’t the first time CurrentC has been delayed, either. Last year, the company’s CEO revealed that it wasn’t going to be launching in 2015 as originally promised.
CurrentC’s big selling point for retailers is (was?) the fact that it lets them circumvent credit card payment fees by routing payments directly through users’ bank accounts, while the service would also work with both iOS and Android. However, it doesn’t use NFC like Apple Pay and Google Pay — opting for QR codes to initiate payments instead — and nor does it support traditional credit cards.
Source: TechCrunch
