CurrentC Out of Juice
The Verge is reporting that MCX, the retail consortium behind Apple Pay competitor CurrentC, is laying off 30 employees. The layoffs may indicate that CurrentC, which never saw widespread release, is dead in the water. Since MCX-affiliated merchants banded together to block Apple Pay in October 2014, some members, such as Best Buy, have added support for Apple Pay, while others, like Walmart, have introduced their own payment apps. This outcome was entirely predictable: CurrentC linked to customer checking accounts via flimsy QR codes, giving it the double whammy of being both inconvenient and insecure.