CEO shakeup at CurrentC consortium
Even before the launch of its flagship product CurrentC, the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) is experiencing some top-level shakeup. Payments expert Brian V. Mooney has been named interim CEO of MCX, and former chief executive Dekkers Davidson is out, according to a report from AppleInsider. Mooney’s most recent role was CEO and board member of Bank of America Merchant Services.
MCX was in the news just a day prior to Davidson’s ouster, with the announcement that consortium member Best Buy would begin accepting rival Apple Pay this year. MCX is planning to launch CurrentC later this year at major partner retailers including Walmart and The Gap. Best Buy is reportedly also going to support CurrentC, but not with the exclusivity that MCX would have hoped for.
In fact, MCX requires an initial exclusive deal with partner retailers, which is why members CVS and Rite Aid switched off Apple Pay support just after the service launched. The agreement requiring partner retailers to remain loyal only to MCX expires this summer, and other CurrentC members are announcing support for Apple Pay. Acme and Home Depot have both revealed their upcoming support for Cupertino’s contactless payment method.
MCX has not revealed why Davidson departed his role at the consortium, but it is probably related to bad press and slow adoption of CurrentC from more retailers. Apple Pay is now supported at more than 700,000 locations and CurrentC is still stuck in a private beta test period at this point, which will certainly make it difficult for the rival to gain traction when it finally launches to the public later this year.
