By Drew FitzGerald
Best Buy Co. said it would join the growing list of retailers
accepting Apple Pay this year, undercutting a merchant-led group
that had hoped to beat Apple with its own mobile-payment
system.
Best Buy's mobile app now accepts Apple Pay online, though
physical stores won't get the service until later this year. A Best
Buy spokesman said the chain needs time to update its own checkout
systems. Apple Inc. mentioned the electronics retailer's
participation during its quarterly earnings call Monday.
The deal complicates the future for Merchant Customer Exchange,
a consortium of retail chains that plans to roll out its own
payment system called CurrentC sometime this summer. Best Buy was a
founding member of the group, also called MCX.
MCX members have pledged in the past not to accept mobile
payments from other sources. But Best Buy on Monday said it would
remain a member of the group even as the chain opens up its cash
registers to Apple.
MCX Chief Operating Officer Scott Rankin said the exclusivity
agreements that tied members to CurrentC will lapse in the second
half of this year, an acknowledgment that the service will have to
compete with one or two other payment systems in the future.
"At some point later this year our exclusivity period ends so
there would obviously be no issues there," Mr. Rankin said in an
interview. "We would obviously love to go faster, but we want to
make sure when we build this thing, we build it right."
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., also a member of MCX, said earlier this
year that it was open in theory to different payment options
including Apple Pay.
Apple launched its payment system on its newest iPhones last
year. The system stores users' credit card information on the
iPhone and verifies the purchaser using a fingerprint scanner.
Write to Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com
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