More Walmart for the day

Jay Yarow has a couple of articles at BusinessInsider.com about Walmart and ApplePay:

Walmart and Apple are in a bit of a tussle over ApplePay, Apple's mobile payment system on the iPhone 6.
Walmart is a leader of the Merchant Customer Exchange, a group of merchants working on their own mobile payment system.
Walmart is not accepting ApplePay right now. Members of MCX, including Rite Aid and CVS, shut down support for ApplePay after a few days of accepting it, most likely out of a contractual obligation to MCX to use only MCX's mobile payment solution.
MCX's alternative to ApplePay is called CurrentC. It has been in development since 2012, and it is a much clunkier solution. The user has to open the CurrentC app, then use a camera to scan a QR code, which is a boxy, bar code type of thing. Or, the user unlocks the phone, opens the app, then has a QR code generated that gets scanned by the retailer.
After we wrote about CurrentC earlier, a Walmart PR rep reached out.
During a back-and-forth, we asked why Walmart didn't accept ApplePay, which is a pretty elegant solution to mobile payments. An iPhone owner simply holds his or her phone to a payment terminal, then uses his or her fingerprint to confirm payment.
Here's what we were told:

There are certainly a lot of compelling technologies being developed, which is great for the mobile-commerce industry as a whole. Ultimately, what matters is that consumers have a payment option that is widely accepted, secure, and developed with their best interests in mind. MCX member merchants already collectively serve a majority of Americans every day. MCX’s members believe merchants are in the best position to provide a mobile solution because of their deep insights into their customers’ shopping and buying experiences.

Our emphasis is added in there. These are mega corporations fighting for billions of dollars— Apple, the banks, Walmart, etc.— so it's hard to know whom to really trust.
But we would trust that Apple is working with consumers in mind.
And we would guess that Walmart is less concerned about consumers and more concerned with eliminating the two percent fee that comes with purchases by credit card. CurrentC bypasses credit-card fees, which will save Walmart money in the long run.
In fact, Ron Shevlin, a retail banking analyst, says he asked former Walmart CEO Lee Scott why MCX could succeed when so many other consortia had failed. Scott's answer tells you a lot about CurrentC, and MCX. He said: "I don’t know that it will, and I don’t care, as long as Visa suffers."

Retailers are rejecting Apple's mobile payment system, ApplePay.  This weekend, CVS and Rite Aid shut down their NFC systems that accepted ApplePay and Google Wallet. Walmart doesn't have its NFC terminals turned on, but, even if it did, it would probably reject ApplePay.
These stores are rejecting ApplePay because they have their own mobile payment system in the works. It's an app called CurrentC.
Josh Constine at TechCrunch had a look at CurrentC. It doesn't sound good.
Here's how it works: when it's time to pay for something, you get a QR code served to you on a payment terminal. You then open your phone, open the CurrentC app, then scan the QR code to pay. It can also work in reverse, where you open your phone, and you have a QR code, and the retailer scans the code.
Compare that with ApplePay, which works like this: when it's time to pay, take out your phone, hold it to the payment terminal, then use the phone's fingerprint scanner to pay, and you're done.
Or, compare both with credit cards: when it's time to pay, take out your credit card, swipe it, sign, and be on your way.
Why are retailers doing CurrentC? Because they hate paying credit-card companies two to three percent on each transaction. CurrentC is run through banks/debit cards, which avoids those fees.  CurrentC is the product of a consortium of US retailers called MCX, which is led by Walmart. Members of MCX account for one in five retail dollars spent in the US.
In 2013, FierceRetailIT reported that MCX was signing retailers to exclusive three-year deals. Retailers couldn't use any other mobile payments systems over a three-year period that started in either 2012 or 2013. That is probably the reason CVS and Rite Aid are shutting down their NFC readers. They are probably contractually obligated.
Beyond being clunky to use, CurrentC also sounds invasive. To sign up, it supposedly wants your social security number and driver's license number to verify who you are. The app collects a lot of information, including your health and location data.
For these reasons, we predict CurrentC is going to be dead on arrival. It's worse than using a credit card, and it's creepy.
It's going to be a bit of a setback for Apple in the short-term, but in the long run it shouldn't be a problem. Retailers want to make paying for stuff as easy, and as secure, as possible. If ApplePay is an easy secure solution that people actually want to use, then retailers will adopt ApplePay as soon as they are out of their contract with MCX. 

Rico says the short-term solution is simple: don't shop at Walmart or CVS or Rite Aid until they wise up... (These articles used the outdated version, Wal-Mart, but it doesn't use the hyphen any more...