Walmart, Target, 7-11 and Best Buy are among more than a dozen merchants joining together today to launch their own network that would give customers the ability to pay for purchases on their smartphones, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The new network’s name, the Merchant Customer Exchange, is of the dry variety you’d expect in the field of payments, however the fierce competition in this emerging market is anything but. In March, Walmart’s vice president and assistant treasurer Mike Cook did not mince words in explaining why his company balks at prospect of sharing its customers private—and highly-valuable—data with the growing number of companies offering mobile payment services (see “The Most Powerful Man in Payments”):
“Would you want some telco provider or some technology provider knowing all of your prescription goods that you purchased at Walgreens or Walmart?,” he said.
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