BOSTON --Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), a company formed by some of the nation's leading merchants to develop a customer-centric and secure mobile payment solution, has unveiled the brand of its new mobile payment network--CurrentC.
The merchants built the CurrentC Network to simplify, enhance and secure their customers' shopping experience. This platform will be available across a broad and growing collection of leading merchants in the big-box, convenience store, pharmacy, gas station, grocery, dining, travel and specialty-retail categories.
Consumers will be able to gain access to the entire CurrentC network and all its benefits by using the CurrentC app as well as through merchants' mobile applications that utilize CurrentC functionality.
CurrentC has been launched in private-pilot mode in select locations across the country. It will expand the private pilot through 2014, with regional and national rollouts to follow in 2015.
"CurrentC will offer customers a simpler, faster, secure way to checkout at their favorite merchants," said CEO Dekkers Davidson. "At full scale, CurrentC will be accepted in more than 110,000 merchant locations across the country, giving consumers unmatched access to their favorite retailers. It will also offer innovative features and benefits, such as merchant loyalty programs and instant coupon savings, all stored on the phone and available right at the point of sale."
The CurrentC mobile wallet app will be free to download through both the App Store and Google Play store and is compatible with major smartphones. When MCX releases the app's full functionality to consumers, CurrentC will simplify and expedite the customer checkout process by applying qualifying offers and coupons, participating merchant rewards, loyalty programs and membership accounts, and offering payment options through the consumer's selected financial account, all with a single scan.
CurrentC will store and automatically apply exclusive offers, coupons and promotions from participating merchants during the payment process. It will allow customers to simplify and organize all participating merchant loyalty cards and membership accounts in one app. Once they are entered, it detects and applies existing and earned rewards automatically during the transaction.
CurrentC will offer customers the freedom to pay with a variety of financial accounts, including personal checking accounts, merchant gift cards and select merchant-branded credit and debit accounts. Additional payment options will be available in the coming months.
CurrentC will provide a more secure payment experience than traditional methods by storing users' sensitive financial information in its cloud vault rather than locally on the mobile device. The app uses a token placeholder to facilitate transactions instead of constantly passing the data between the user, merchant and financial institution.
"The CurrentC Network will provide merchants with unparalleled reach and resources in the mobile payments category," said Davidson. "It will offer merchants new and exciting channels to engage with customers, strengthen relationships, and enjoy more control of transaction data."
CurrentC is a software-based solution that works with most existing point-of-sale (POS) and payment terminals, providing merchants large and small with a cost-effective entry point into the mobile payments movement. CurrentC will use a secure paycode and will not require additional hardware from most customers or merchants.
Boston-based Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) is building a customer-focused and security-driven mobile payment solution that will deliver a better payment and shopping experience for customers and merchants. In the convenience store and gas station channel, MCX merchants include 76, 7-Eleven, Alon, Circle K, Conoco, ExxonMobil, GetGo, Kum & Go, My Goods Market, Phillips 66, QuikTrip, RaceTrac, Sheetz, Shell, Sunoco and Wawa. Collectively, MCX companies operate more than 110,000 locations and process more than $1 trillion in payments annually.
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