Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), a partnership between retailers including
MCX, which describes itself as "the only merchant-owned mobile commerce network built to streamline the customer shopping experience," told users that unknown individuals had gained access to customer email addresses and that it had learned of the breach in the last 36 hours. The Needham, Mass.-based company is currently beta testing its main product, CurrentC, an app that will allow users to pay at physical retail stores with their phones.
"Within the last 36 hours, we learned that unauthorized third parties obtained the e-mail addresses of some of our CurrentC pilot program participants and individuals who had expressed interest in the app," said MCX spokesperson Linda Walsh in a statement. "Many of these email addresses are dummy accounts used for testing purposes only."
MCX also noted that the CurrentC app was not affected and that it had individually contacted users whose emails had been stolen. It is unclear how many emails were taken in the breach.
"MCX is continuing to investigate this situation and will provide updates as necessary," read part of company's email to customers. "We take the security of your information extremely seriously, apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your support of CurrentC."
MCX is comprised of more than 50 businesses which include some of the nation's largest retailers and restaurants like Lowe's and Olive Garden. Collectively those companies operate more than 110,000 locations and process more than $1 trillion in payments annually. MCX's CurrentC was expected to be in a private pilot through the end of the year, with national rollouts expected in 2015.
Unlike Apple Pay, which allows the company's new smartphones and hardware to communicate with point-of-sale systems through Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, CurrentC noted its software would not require merchants to employ new or additional hardware and instead relied on QR codes scanned from phones. On Monday, CVS and Rite Aid, both MCX partners, said that they were disabling NFC capabilities on point-of-sale systems like cash registers in an effort to curb the use of Apple Pay.
"It's a skirmish," said
There doesn't seem to be much love for the CurrentC app in Apple's App Store where it is free to download. Currently, more than 2,000 people have rated the app, which has received an average rating of one star out of a possible five. Most of those rating CurrentC, however, seem to be using the system to provide a personal message to the retailers involved with MCX.
"The retailers who are supporting this payment system should be told emphatically that to require this form of payment over another acceptable form of payment is not tolerated," wrote one frustrated consumer. "If these merchants want to continue with their own mobile payment system, there is nothing wrong with that... as long as they allow a choice."
In a blog post to his company's website on Wednesday, MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson said that the group's participating retailers chose to work with MCX exclusively in implementing mobile payments systems. While earlier reports suggested that there would be fines for MCX retailers that accepted Apple Pay and stepped away from the MCX system, Davidson said that was not the case.
"MCX merchants make their own decisions about what solutions they want to bring to their customers; the choice is theirs," he wrote. "When merchants choose to work with MCX, they choose to do so exclusively and we’re proud of the long list of merchants who have partnered with us. Importantly, if a merchant decides to stop working with MCX, there are no fines."
