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CurrentC hit by hackers

Written by George Anderson

In a blog post yesterday, Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), the consortium of retailers developing the CurrentC mobile payment system, revealed that unauthorized third parties were able to gain access to the group's system and obtain e-mail addresses of people participating in the pilot program as well as others who had expressed an interest. The group said the CurrentC app itself was not affected.

MCX said that its partners were told of the incident and that each of the individuals affected were notified. The group said it was continuing its investigation and would provide updates as necessary. What's not known is how many e-mail addresses were stolen or which retailers were participating in the pilots.

Dekkers Davidson, CEO of MCX, said deployment of CurrentC would not be affected by the hacking incident and that he was confident in the group's ability to safeguard consumers' financial information.

"Our systems have been attacked repeatedly in the last seven or eight days and have withstood far more significant attacks," Mr. Davidson said on a conference call with reporters (via Bloomberg News). "Any kind of attack or incident is one you have to learn from and get stronger."

Numerous studies have shown that consumers are increasingly concerned about data security, although that has failed to appreciably change shopping behavior to this point. The question is whether adoption of a new app such as CurrentC could be hindered with negative press of this kind.

"This kind of hack isn't like[ly] to install a lot of confidence among skittish customers looking for reassurance that they can safely buy at retailers," Geoff Webb, a senior director with NetQ, told USA Today.

MCX has also gotten some unwanted press of late as retailer members of the group have refused to allow customers to use Apple Pay. In a RetailWire discussion and poll on Tuesday, the overwhelming majority of respondents thought MCX members were making a mistake by not accepting the rival payment technology.

Speaking earlier this week at the WSJD Live Global Technology Conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook said Apple Pay was already the leader in "contactless" payments with more than one million credit cards activated within 72 hours of its launch in the U.S.

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