MCX doublespeak

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Kevin Fitchard wrote on Gigaom about the surreal interview given by MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson.

He said no MCX member would be fined or penalized for accepting Apple Pay (contrary to an earlier report in the New York Times), while reiterating that member merchants have all agreed to use CurrentC exclusively.

So are the members free to breach the agreement with no penalties?

From what I gather based on numerous sidestepped questions asked at the press conference, Davidson feels that MCX retailers are free do whatever they like as long as they quit the consortium, and that competition and third-party innovation are great as long as they’re done at some other retailer’s stores.

Davidson sounds confused to me.

One of Davidson’s final comments was perhaps the most telling. He said the goal of MCX was for retailers to establish much stronger bonds with their customers, the implication being that Apple, Google or the carriers stand in the way of establishing that bond. “Three’s a crowd,” he said.

I prefer a crowd than banking solely on the first mobile payment solution to be hacked even before it launched.

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