The payments war has been well and truly on as companies like Stripe, Apple and PayPal battle it out to control the next generation of currency.
One of the more hapless bystanders in this has been the CurrentC consortium, a group of US retailers set up to take advantage of mobile technology and bypass merchant fees.
This weekend news leaked out that some of the consortium members have disabled Near Field Communications functions in their store Point of Sale systems to prevent Apple Pay and Google Wallet from working while they wait to roll out CurrentC.
In a deep dive review of CurrentC, Tech Crunch looks at how the service works and its limitations. One of the things that jumps out in Tech Crunch’s review is just how cumbersome the system is compared to its competitors.
Despite being founded in 2011 and having the backing of some of America’s biggest companies, CurrentC is two, or possibly three, iterations behind other services which illustrates the problem of incumbents trying to innovate their way out of problems.
No doubt the committee model of CurrentC hasn’t helped the development process along with the aim being addressing the consortium’s fixation with merchant fees rather than making things easier for customers.
It’s hard not to conclude that CurrentC is doomed and the actions of retailers in blocking competitor’s products is only staving off the inevitable. When old businesses embrace new tech they have to be thinking of their customers’ problems, not theirs.