Sam Oliver
An exclusivity agreement that has caused some merchants involved in the MCX consortium — Â notably drug store chain CVS — Â to abruptly pull support for NFC-based payment systems, including Apple Pay and Google Wallet, is set to expire in "months," according to a new report.
The consortium, which is made up of a number of major retailers including CVS, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart, instituted the exclusivity contract to provide "breathing room" for the development of the CurrentC ecosystem, MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson told Re/code. That contract is set to expire in "months, not years," Dekkers added.
Confirmation of the exclusivity agreement comes one week after the arrangement was first uncovered, following reports that CVS had disabled NFC terminals in its stores to prevent customers' use of Apple Pay.
It is unclear whether membership in the MCX consortium and mobile payment exclusivity are mutually inclusive, though that does not appear to be the case. While CVS appears to have agreed to that stipulation, midwest grocery chain Meijer — Â another MCX partner — Â continues to allow Apple Pay in its own stores.
Members who do not follow through with the exclusivity provisions are reportedly liable to be fined, though Davidson did deny that the consortium directed CVS to take action. Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that the "skirmish" between competing mobile payment providers would ultimately be decided by consumers "over the long arc of time."
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59 Comments
Oh I bet some lawyer is getting his ass kicked for that wording at CurrentC HQ. Not as bad as IBM forgetting to tie Microsoft up legally as exclusive but pretty sloppy. But maybe they are just beta version agreements only anyway.
Oh I bet some lawyer is getting his ass kicked for that wording at CurrentC HQ. Not as bad as IBM forgetting to tie Microsoft up legally as exclusive but pretty sloppy. But maybe they are just beta version agreements only anyway.
Everything that has come out said it was a three year exclusivity deal. Also Meijer had NFC before joining MCX, and the agreement supposedly was for any new mobile payment solutions and grandfathered existing solutions. So Meijer can have both since it adopted NFC 5 years ago.
How can they even have an expiring exclusivity agreement for something that is nothing but vaporware? This whole thing needs to die off. Now. This half-cocked idea was completely blindsided by ApplePay, and they are struggling with the inevitable now: how to go down swinging. Retailers had high hopes for this for one reason and one reason only: No Credit Card fees. They were promised the dreamy possibility of 2-3% revenue growth just from credit card fees alone becoming a thing of the past. Well, it was an empty promise that was never going to take off anyway...with or without ApplePay. ApplePay did it right, by involving people's existing cards, and signing up the card issuers first. And now every single on of these retailers that signed up for the empty promises of MCX are throwing angry darts at their MCX contract, as they miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to be an ApplePay supporter, during a time when this new and popular system is actually driving people to seek out merchants that support it, and shop there. This completely unique in the retail game....and they are missing it, and I guarantee you they are unbelievably sore at missing it.
Oh I bet some lawyer is getting his ass kicked for that wording at CurrentC HQ. Not as bad as IBM forgetting to tie Microsoft up legally as exclusive but pretty sloppy. But maybe they are just beta version agreements only anyway.
Yeah it seems like they are changing their minds quite frequently on what is and what is not CurrentC lol
MCX holds a loser hand. When Apple and Discover announce that Discover Card is coming to Apple Pay, that will lock it up with 95%+ credit cards enrolled with Apple Pay.