Apple Pay competitor CurrentC suffers e-mail breach

Luckily the hacked accounts were dummies that were only being used for testing

You know how CurrentC was, all of the sudden, being seen as a major threat to Apple Pay, a.k.a. Apple's new mobile payments system? Well, maybe Apple doesn't have all that much to worry about after all.

That is because CurrentC, the mobile payments system that was developed by the Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX,has been hacked. The incident was revealed in a short post on Wednesday.

The breach  took place within the last day and a half, and, thankfully,MCX says that no actual users were affected by the breach, as the accounts that were hacked were fake, and being used only for testing purposes. 

Here is the blog post, in full:

"Within the last 36 hours, we learned that unauthorized third parties obtained the e-mail addresses of some of our CurrentC pilot program participants and individuals who had expressed interest in the app. Many of these email addresses are dummy accounts used for testing purposes only. The CurrentC app itself was not affected," MCX wrote.

"We have notified our merchant partners about this incident and directly communicated with each of the individuals whose email addresses were involved. We take the security of our users’ information extremely seriously. MCX is continuing to investigate this situation and will provide updates as necessary."

This is not very good timing for CurrentC, as it recently came into the news when two big retailers, CVS and Rite Aid, dropped Apple Pay, the mobile payments system introduced by Apple in early September, in favor of CurrentC.

That fact that the system has just started getting major press might also explain why the hacking happened so quickly after. 

CVS and Rite Aid are members of  MCX, along with major Best Buy, Gap and Walmart. The group system is expected to pose a serious threat to Apple's Mobile Wallet ambitions: members of the group represent more than $1 trillion in annual sales, 110,000 total stores and more than one-fifth of total United States retail sales volume.

CurrentC would work by linking to a person’s debit account. Each time the person makes a purchase, the merchant will have to scan a QR code, taking the funds directly from the debit account. The system appeals to merchants, as it allows them to save money on credit card transaction fees.

Despite the reach and size of its retailers, though, CurrentC will have a tough time competiting against Apple, given that millions of people already have their credit card on file with the company through iTunes, which they already use to pay for things like apps and songs on their phones. So it doesn’t actually require most people to even do anything different than they already have been.

With Apple Pay, users can pay with NFC technology and their touch ID directly from their phones. It works by taking the credit card the user already has on file with iTunes and adding it to Passport. Each time the user pays, they use a one-time payment number.

The credit card number is never stored on the device, and if the card is lost or stolen, the user can easily suspend payments on their phone. 

(Image source: mcx.com)