Apple Pay Opponent MCX Suffers Hack Attack Email addresses from pilot participants were stolen, the company said, though the forthcoming mobile app -- which lets users purchase goods by scanning a QR code -- was not affected.
By Geoff Weiss
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This certainly doesn't bode well.
The retail consortium known as MCX, which is developing a mobile payment platform called CurrentC, has already been hacked. Though the service won't launch until next year, pilot participants received word today that certain user email addresses had been stolen.
The CurrentC app -- which is still in testing phases -- allows consumers to purchase goods by scanning a QR code with their smartphones. The mobile app itself was not affected in the hack, MCX said. Many of the stolen addresses were actually dummy accounts.
Related: From Snapchat to Whisper: Blindly Trusting Companies With Your Privacy Is Stupid
"We have notified our merchant partners about this incident," the company wrote in a statement, "and directly communicated with each of the individuals whose email addresses were involved."
MCX ruffled feathers last weekend when two of its member merchants -- Rite Aid and CVS -- barred Apple Pay from its stores. Walmart-led MCX has been developing CurrentC for three years. The group's roughly 50 retail partners count 110,000 total store locations that process more than $1 trillion in annual sales, including Best Buy, Dunkin' Donuts, Gap, Lowe's, Target and more.
The consortium's plans only recently garnered mainstream attention after setting Apple Pay in its crosshairs. In a recent post on its website to debunk misperceptions about the forthcoming platform, MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson spoke extensively about fraud protection. "Consumers' privacy and data security are our top priorities," he wrote.
Related: 50 Major Retailers Are Teaming Up on a Mobile Payment System to Defeat Apple Pay
