Category: Mobile Payments

This has been a long awaited phase of the overall strategy from the Merchant Customer Exchange.

The original announcement that the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) would be releasing a mobile payments system was made quite a while ago, and now the unveiling of this network has finally occurred.

This new feature of the joint venture of some of the largest retailers in the United States should be ready next year.

The MCX announced that its commercial retail launch of this mobile payments service will occur in 2015. The m-commerce venture, as a whole, was initially created in 2012. It includes Walmart, Target, and 7-Eleven, and was created to make it possible for consumers to be able to shop over their smartphones and to use those mobile devices as an alternative to credit cards and debit cards when making a purchase in store.

This mobile payments venture has also included a number of tech partnerships, including Paydient, Gemalto, and FIS.

Together, they have now unveiled the CurrentC network. This will give consumers the ability to use their smartphones to pay for purchases at over 110,000 different American merchant locations across the country, through the use of their smartphones instead of plastic cards. The service will try out a few private pilots, which have already been started (but that will be increased throughout the remainder of this year) in advance of the regional and then the national rollouts that will occur at various times in 2015.

The CurrentC mobile apps for Android and iOS are free and are being readied for download. That said, participating merchants are capable of integrating this tech into their own proprietary applications if that is their choice.

The mobile payments wallet service gives smartphone users the ability to link their existing accounts to their devices, but they will also be able to use gift cards as well as branded credit and debit cards with the app. Then, when they reach the checkout counter while in store, they will be able to simply scan barcodes using their smartphones in order to verify and complete the transaction and purchase the items they want.

Isis has announced it is changing its name to Softcard.

The Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T supported, American mobile wallet platform, is rebranding in an effort to avoid the possibility of being wrongly associated with the Islamic militant group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), which has been involved in the deaths of Americans and citizens of other nations, including the recent public execution of American journalist, James Foley.

The change will take place in “a few weeks” according to the company’s homepage.

The CEO of Isis, Michael Abbott, explained in a note regarding the change that “However coincidental, we have no desire to share a name with this group and our hearts go out to those affected by this violence.” Abbott also added that only the name is changing, but everything else about the mobile wallet app will remain the same.

In the next few weeks, the Softcard app will be launched. Once it has been released, users of the portable payment system can update it as they usually would and once they do, their Isis Wallet will simply become SoftCard. Users can still expect the same services and features they are used to that enable them to securely store their financial information and make in-store purchases with a tap of their smartphones. “Your current Isis Wallet will continue to work as it always has,” Abbott says.

The CEO also explained the reasons behind why the name Softcard was selected. According to Abbott, what the company wanted was a name and “visual identity that had the power, flexibility and simplicity to define our category.”

Isis – soon to be Softcard – isn’t the only mobile wallet making news.

Amazon is one of the most recent companies to enter the mobile payments market with Amazon Wallet. However, at present, that app only stores reward and gift cards which can be scanned during purchasing.

In addition, the Isis mobile wallet name change announcement occurred almost a week prior to Apple unveiling details regarding its mobile payments service, Apple Pay, which was revealed by the company on September 9. Apple’s new payment system also uses NFC technology and will only be available on its new smartphones the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus.