Memories
This battle brings back memories, I remember when in the early to mid 2000's circa 2004, Real Player tried to push their media player/ipod competitor through and relative music service instead of itunes....it failed...
Google wallet was a great idea, and could still be a option...
MCX has put together a good and long list of merchants, some who will also accept apple pay, some who will not, but the one thing they have not been able to do so far is bring in a large body of banks and credit cards willing to support them, in fact, they are facing pushback from major players like Chase/Bank of America/Visa/Mastercard and Amex, who vastly prefer the much more secure, and accessible payment function of Apple Pay.
While i will no longer support rite aid or CVS, that is actually an easy decision because both those drugstores actually kinda suck for an average consumer anyway, they are outdated, in bad locations(exception of major cities) or is disrepair, whereas Walgreens in my area are all new and nicely stocked with more competitive pricing.
I expect in the long run MCX will fail, badly, and i argue that it will fail because hardware manufacturers on both sides of the aisle(Google and Apple) will not support it, and if they are pinning their hopes on Windows Phone, well that is a very small subset of the total population, and one must also understand that MCX is more of a US only payment system which will have almost zero international presence, whereas Apple is already building partnerships with China UnionPay(having lived in China, Unionpay is the equivalent of Visa/Mastercard here) and used by all major Chinese banks. NFC/mobile payments via secure device identifier is a far more secure way that is compatible with the rest of the world. whereas MCX will not be..
I think that the majority of retailers signed up for MCX will eventually accept both due to customer demand, and that will be the death bell for this service. I could be wrong, but I use visa/amex/debit with my i6 and have loved the experience so far, mind you i was already a wholefoods customer and many other local merchants where i live have said they will support apple pay in the near future(small biz) as it is cheaper for them...plus they are required to upgrade..