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This is a really interesting battle, because MCX's CurrenC looks like an utterly horrible piece of shit that was almost certainly doomed to fail even if Apple h

by veidr 12y ago

This is a really interesting battle, because MCX's CurrenC looks like an utterly horrible piece of shit that was almost certainly doomed to fail even if Apple had never come up with anything in this space. http://www.imore.com/depth-look-currentc-and-personal-data-they-want-collect http://www.imore.com/depth-look-currentc-and-personal-data-t...

soylentcola 12y ago
What it is is annoying and disheartening. When Google Wallet came out I wasn't able to use it for anything but loyalty cards since carrier versions of phones that normally supported it were gimped in order to stall Wallet's adoption while the carriers tried to develop their own system. About a year ago I got a Nexus 5 and have been using Wallet's tap-to-pay ever since. It's pretty convenient to pull out my phone, flash the loyalty card, and wave it over the POS terminal. I get a little receipt scrolling up the screen and a copy is emailed to me. Now Apple has joined the party and with the two biggest smartphone OSes supporting tap-to-pay (and with implementations that both work on standard POS terminals with NFC) it looked like there would finally be some push to get support from retailers that hadn't updated their terminals yet. Seemed like a win-win. Both iOS and Android fans would have a convenient and more secure way to pay for things without any of the lock-in or incompatibility that normally comes along when Apple and Google are competing in the same space. ...but no. These guys are taking a page from the carrier playbook and deliberately disabling something that has been working for years just as it's gaining popularity outside the early-adopter/techie space. It's the sort of thing that bums me out and I wish it didn't affect so many retailers so I could participate in my own ineffective (but satisfying) boycott. As it stands, I guess I'll just go back to the plastic because there's no way I'm installing this CurrenC nonsense. It would have been nicer if they competed by building their own NFC implementation that also worked on common hardware (a-la Wallet and Pay) so users could choose to use it if they wanted. Maybe they could offer coupons or some other reason people might decide to opt in. At least that would be competing in a way that didn't hurt overall adoption. Instead they went the route of scumbags like cell carriers.

by veidr 12y ago

soylentcola 12y ago

What it is is annoying and disheartening. When Google Wallet came out I wasn't able to use it for anything but loyalty cards since carrier versions of phones that normally supported it were gimped in order to stall Wallet's adoption while the carriers tried to develop their own system. About a year ago I got a Nexus 5 and have been using Wallet's tap-to-pay ever since. It's pretty convenient to pull out my phone, flash the loyalty card, and wave it over the POS terminal. I get a little receipt scrolling up the screen and a copy is emailed to me. Now Apple has joined the party and with the two biggest smartphone OSes supporting tap-to-pay (and with implementations that both work on standard POS terminals with NFC) it looked like there would finally be some push to get support from retailers that hadn't updated their terminals yet. Seemed like a win-win. Both iOS and Android fans would have a convenient and more secure way to pay for things without any of the lock-in or incompatibility that normally comes along when Apple and Google are competing in the same space. ...but no. These guys are taking a page from the carrier playbook and deliberately disabling something that has been working for years just as it's gaining popularity outside the early-adopter/techie space. It's the sort of thing that bums me out and I wish it didn't affect so many retailers so I could participate in my own ineffective (but satisfying) boycott. As it stands, I guess I'll just go back to the plastic because there's no way I'm installing this CurrenC nonsense. It would have been nicer if they competed by building their own NFC implementation that also worked on common hardware (a-la Wallet and Pay) so users could choose to use it if they wanted. Maybe they could offer coupons or some other reason people might decide to opt in. At least that would be competing in a way that didn't hurt overall adoption. Instead they went the route of scumbags like cell carriers.