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MCX Confirms Retailer Exclusivity for CurrentC Mobile Payments, but No Fines for Leaving Consortium
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If the big battle is between retailers and banks, then why shut off only Apple pay? Why not stop accepting credit cards as well, the same ones they are refusing through Apple pay??
Apple pay, as you say correctly, is only a 'layer' or a 'messenger'. Why shoot the messenger?
By shutting off NFC payments, they have made this a 'battle' between MCX app and NFC based apps. The 'real battle' has been lost of trying to squeeze banks margins, which I totally agree with. The fatcat bankers have a lot to answer for....
I thought this was macrumors? not currentc bashing. Instead of working with banks apple needs to work with retailers on getting nfc terminals. Since apple pay been announce there wasn't any new retailers but it seems like we lost nfc payment locations.
yeah, choice is good (or can be good)... though i imagine the retailers shutting off nfc is temporary and gives the lawyers time to sort things out.. (which is probably bad for us
)idk, it seems these threads/topics are pitting NFC vs MCX as if those are, in their current implementations, the only two solutions.. the solution that is best probably falls somewhere in the middle of those two..
apple pay seems really great but the fact that you can only use it with apple hardware is pretty silly and makes me hesitant to join the side of 'apple pay or die
"however this pans out in the end, i'm pretty sure the solution won't be the one which puts the consumer's best interest at the top of the list.. (i.e. neither apple pay nor currentC does this.. and i'm pretty sure the mobile payment system which is widespread in a couple of years won't either)
And that's both creepy and stupid. All the targeted ads that I get are targeted at exactly the wrong target. I'm interested in buying something, investigate it everywhere, buy what I want - and for years to come I get adverts that I'm not interested in one bit, because I've bought the thing that you're advertising and I'm not going to buy another one!
You email friends talking about baby stuff and - wait a second - you are saying Google reads my emails? ******* Google. Worse, they don't notice that the babies I talked about are now in their 20s and really not interested in baby stuff.
I once was followed for _four years_ by ads relating to a Christmas present that I bought for someone else. Neither me nor the person receiving the present would have been interested. After making a business trip and looking at restaurants at the destination of the trip on the other side of the world, it took two years until Google stopped recommending restaurants that were 14 hours flight away.
Sir I get the frustration with enriching banks, especially given their role in the economic turmoil the past six years. But do you not find it ironic that MCX retailers are hoping to remove transaction fees/bank enrichment by ACH transfers from consumers' accounts held at, drumroll please, the BANKS!!? It's six in one hand half a dozen in the other, and these MCX guys want to have their cake and eat it by enjoying the luxury of electronic banking without those pesky costs of using it.
What's funny about this is in the statement released confirming the app it was said to the affect of that most of the email address obtained were dummy accounts used for testing and that the CurrentC system itself was not affected. Seriously??? Was this system developed by 5th graders? Does this not open their eyes up to seeing that the system security is not what they think it is???
You can pay with your iPhone in Best Buy, you just have to have your Amazon app open while you're there.
Isn't Best Buy just a showroom for Amazon anyways?
FYI- Unless they changed it, Best Buy has been price-matching Amazon for over a year now. So there's no need to wait for Amazon to ship what you want.
This wasn't really an investigation of MCX, as it was just getting started.
But, if you read the key paragraph:
27. Joint ventures that are collaborations between competitors may warrant antitrust scrutiny. The Antitrust Guidelines for Collaborations Among Competitors issued by the U.S. antitrust agencies in April 2000 describe the principles for evaluating agreements among competitors and the analytical framework for doing so. Two broad categories of anticompetitive harm theories are (1) exclusion and (2) overly inclusive joint venture. For exclusion, harm may arise if a joint venture denies some key element to rival systems and thereby reduces competition. Whether this is a viable theory would depend on factors such as the freedom that the joint ventures members have to participate in multiple mobile payment systems (multi-home), the extent to which the members, individually or collectively, have market power with respect to the denied element, and the availability of adequate substitutes for that element. For the overly inclusive joint venture theory, harm may arise if a joint ventures membership is so expansive, or its rules sufficiently restrictive, as to prevent the emergence or viability of a rival mobile payment system that might otherwise threaten the joint ventures market power. Factors relevant to this analysis include the joint ventures exclusivity, membership scope, whether current members would help form competing systems but for the overly inclusive nature of the joint venture, and if so, the impact of such participation on the timeliness, likelihood, and sufficiency of such entry.
This was effectively the FTC's shot across the bow of MCX. And, it looks like MCX didn't realize it.
I'll bet the FTC is now really investigating MCX. If you want to encourage it, you can file a complaint here:
https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/
This whole CurrentC thing is exactly the kind of crap Steve Jobs seemed to ridicule, back in the day.
I imagine a bunch of brainless dopes in suits, sitting around at a board meeting, thinking of how they can mine the sheep for their purchasing habits, and then being suckered into thinking that QR codes on a smartphone are somehow equivalent in the techie/convenience/coolness dept. to something like ApplePay. It's like the idiot at HP, back in the day, who famously quipped, "What would a regular person want to do with a computer?" Or the genius from Xerox who said, "Do you really think Xerox is going to sell something called a 'mouse'?"
And yes...I do get most of my computer/technology history from "Pirates of Silicon Valley."
I imagine a bunch of brainless dopes in suits, sitting around at a board meeting, thinking of how they can mine the sheep for their purchasing habits, and then being suckered into thinking that QR codes on a smartphone are somehow equivalent in the techie/convenience/coolness dept. to something like ApplePay. It's like the idiot at HP, back in the day, who famously quipped, "What would a regular person want to do with a computer?" Or the genius from Xerox who said, "Do you really think Xerox is going to sell something called a 'mouse'?"
And yes...I do get most of my computer/technology history from "Pirates of Silicon Valley."
I now wonder about that as people are pointing out that Target offers 5% off with their RedCard (Debit or Credit). Isn't that more than the credit card fees so they'd be making LESS money on each item? If so, where's the upside? Wouldn't it have to be on the data mining side?
After all the news about stealing customer credit card numbers from Target and the likes, I'm using cash and/or debit card with a PIN. I don't trust anyone with my credit cards. My credit card numbers were stolent/replicated 3 times now, it's always a hassle to resolve. I will never use CurrentC, and will evaluate if I should use Apple Pay/Google Wallet when the technology matures.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
No argument against that. I don't think CurrentC is a plot against consumers. I think it's small margin businesses vs. big-pocketed banks. If a consumer wants to pay with some rewards-loaded CC, I'm sure stores will still accept that card. I don't think CurrentC's main focus is on destroying rewards programs attached to CCs; I do think it's about trying to keep more of the profit associated with everything we buy with the store that sold that something (rather than have the banks take a big bite of it).
Only that's not google. That's the retailer or business doing the advertising who isn't "letting you go."
Occurs to me: the outrage over CurrentC demanding SSN, DL, etc (all highly identity-theftable!) forgets that the regular credit card system - which 
Pay is leveraging - does the same thing! Credit cards require the same information when signing up; they've just leveraged where you've provided it elsewhere (say, opening a regular bank savings account) or otherwise made it so easy you hardly notice; we've just been conditioned that it's OK to give such personal data to a bank (which credit cards operate thru) with little concern, and that anyone else asking for it is worth severe suspicion. All Pay did was make the clever move of operating thru existing cards (just point camera at card, done) and providing a new layer of security encryption that's easy for both customer and seller to handle; CurrentC is trying to escape credit cards outright, hence they need all that information for such serious monetary operations.
Pay is leveraging - does the same thing! Credit cards require the same information when signing up; they've just leveraged where you've provided it elsewhere (say, opening a regular bank savings account) or otherwise made it so easy you hardly notice; we've just been conditioned that it's OK to give such personal data to a bank (which credit cards operate thru) with little concern, and that anyone else asking for it is worth severe suspicion. All Pay did was make the clever move of operating thru existing cards (just point camera at card, done) and providing a new layer of security encryption that's easy for both customer and seller to handle; CurrentC is trying to escape credit cards outright, hence they need all that information for such serious monetary operations.
Probably the same PR rep who is saying Apple Pay isn't secure as some celebrities iCould accounts were compromised because they used weak passwords.
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And CurrentC has been hacked.... Breach involves theft of e-mail addresses, but not the mobile app, company confirms via TechCrunch
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/29/re...s-been-hacked-testers-email-addresses-stolen/
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/29/re...s-been-hacked-testers-email-addresses-stolen/
Actually, pads like that get hacked even though they encrypt the data. The malware takes the card number the moment it's read. The number is not encrypted on the card at all, so there's always a time in which the unencrypted number exists somewhere on the pad.
Apple Pay and Google Wallet tokenise the number before it even leaves the NFC device, so there is never, at any time, an unencrypted copy of the card number anywhere on your store's terminal. In the case of Apple Pay, at least, the device doesn't have the unencrypted card number, either -- just a device-unique number that looks like a credit card number to the phone but isn't the same account number printed on the card.
Given this, it's in your best interest to accept NFC so customers can pay with NFC devices. Sure, some will use cards that have built-in NFC and may not be tokenised, but many will also use more-secure tokenising NFC phones/tablets/other NFC devices that do do so.
So. Do you accept NFC? If not, why are you foregoing this powerful added security and exposing your customers to fraud?
I think the ads they were integrating into iAd regarding ApplePay would be using iBeacon tech to push notify you of a coupon in an area of the store you are in. I don't think it's based on your purchase history.
An example of what I am thinking is:
"Bob is walking down the bread aisle and stops by the sandwich bread. He grabs a loaf when his phone alerts him. He sees coupons for deli meat and cheese. Bob is buying stuff for lunches at work so he adds those coupons to Passbook. He grabs the meat and cheeses and heads to the register. Passbook generates a lock screen notification that the cashier can scan to collect the coupons and he pays with ApplePay through the terminal."
I could be totally wrong though
Right there's the key line. For about 4-5 days now, every one of these threads has filled in with an abundance of attacks against the non-Apple alternative. No surprise- that's almost a universal rule for all things related to Apple. Post after post about foolishly turning away money is right but implying that these huge retailers are dumb is wrong. There have a reason for trying to go another way and there it is.
Apple's solution piles on to a long-term leech arrangement that enriches the big banks. Everything we buy with credit cards and now Apple Pay dings the seller a few percentage points in transaction costs. Apparently Apple takes a very little slice of that and the banks take the rest. It's no small change. A retailer with an 8% profit who is dinged 2% (of revenues) in total when they take a credit card (or now Apple Pay), is redirecting 25% of their profit to these banks. Imagine if AT&T, Verizon, etc took 25% of Apple's profits in order to cover their part of making the iPhone business go. Would Apple be dumb for trying to find another way to do business to reduce or eliminate that 25% cut? Of course not, and "we" would be finding great fault with AT&T, Verizon, etc for taking such a big bite out of Apple's profits rather than marginalizing it as "a cost of doing business" and so on.
Apparently this CurrentC is an attempt to somewhat replicate a mobile payment option while (maybe) cutting out the leeches. For consumers, we would still get to buy things at the exact same price (so there's no higher cost burden for us) but the merchant would get to keep more of their profit rather than lose it to gigantic banks who have little-to-nothing to do with the work of driving each sale.
As a point of comparison, visit an
Too bad Apple Pay didn't take on the mobile payments business in a similar way. In other words, instead of partnering with the leeches (and thus offering yet another way to further enrich the big banks), what if Apple had chosen to implement Apple Pay as CurrentC appears to be trying to do (cut out those middlemen bankers)? Then, we could have the great, ease-of-use benefits of Apple's option while helping ALL businesses be more profitable than they can be "as is". Instead of having to pitch retailers on partnering with Apple Pay, all retailers could keep more of their profits on every sale by encouraging Apple Pay.
Are there things wrong with CurrentC concept? Of course. But the one thing that appears to be better is this goal of cutting out that transactional cost. It wouldn't take a lot for Apple to make Apple Pay also work with CurrentC. Then those businesses wanting to continue to send a couple percent of their profits to the big banks could stick with "as is" solution and those wanting to keep that profit could use CurrentC. For us consumers, Apple Pay would work the exact same way as a kind of UI layer atop whichever method is being used by a given retailer. Quicktime or Safari runs atop both OS X and Windows OSs. Those are very different systems behind the scenes but the part "we" use is largely the same. Apple Pay could work like that too with both platforms.
In other words, Apple almost shouldn't care about the CurrentC initiative. Just make Apple Pay work with that platform too and everybody (except the big banks) would be happy. Many of "us" are treating CurrentC like it's some kind of attack against Apple. It's not. It's just a bunch of companies mostly trying to cut a hefty albatross cost. Apple could help them do that with Apple Pay and the end result for us consumers would be transparent (we wouldn't even know if it was the "as is" or CurrentC platform underpinning any given transaction).
One advantage of using a credit card is the cash back option. With my Amex card, I get 2% back on all purchases. This card is going to work with Apple Pay in the near future. This is a no annual fee card for good credit customers. I charge everything that I can on it, and Apple Pay makes it really convenient, even on my iPad as it can be used online with Apple Pay participating companies. No one sees my credit card information.
On a related note, it would be possible for Apple Pay to extend to direct withdrawals from a bank account or credit union. There should probably be a reward % based on such purchases.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I don't think CurrentC is about refusing to accept credit cards. For many years to come, many (most) shoppers will not have NFC-equipped iPhones. They'll still use credit cards because that's what they know. Stores would be dumb to try to force a mass change from a system that has been in place for decades.
BUT, there's nothing wrong with trying to cut into the profit that underpins that system. So as people begin to make the shift from plastic to virtual plastic, there are some opportunities to potentially reduce the bite of the big banks on every transaction. Lots of people still pay with checks & cash. Lots of people pay with Debit Cards. In a migration toward the new, there are opportunities to reconsider the good and the bad of the old. A retailer should look for ways to reduce their costs. Maybe they can find one such way here?
And if Apple is not obligated to ONLY support the "as is" system could help this along by making Apple Pay also work atop any CurrentC-type system. Then all of this background stuff would be invisible to the Apple Payer as they wouldn't even need to know if a given store is using the "as is" or CurrentC or something else.
My ex-cable company offered me nothing of value over Netflix/Hulu/etc. So no, I don't defend them.As a point of comparison, visit an
My CC company offers me insurance, fraud protection, etc over cash/CurrentC. So yes, I'd rather use a CC. Ever been in China and needed help because your debit card won't work in an ATM? It's a 12 hour difference... my bank was closed and had no toll free number. AMEX was open and had an international toll free number - they got me the money I needed when the ATM wouldn't work with my bank debit card. That was priceless to me. Even better, Apple Pay offers me privacy WITH the CC benefits, bonus.
Two very different situations.
I just asked that question in best buy this week. Said no, so I left and bought at amazon.