Merchant Customer Exchange

The leading world retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores, Best Buy and Target, announced the beginning of work on creation of joint venture which will be engaged in creation of solutions and promotion of technology of mobile payments.

The new company will be called Merchant Customer Exchange, she will be engaged, in particular, in mobile application development for smartphones using which it will be possible to shop, use electronic coupons to participate in loyalty applets.

Competitors

Retail networks announced the intention to become more active in the market of mobile payments where rather large number of the players believing that the smartphone can really become "a mobile purse" of the future already acts. Among like those, for example, Internet giant Google which already released mobile applications for payments, used on the Sprint phones. The largest mobile operators of the USA, Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile of USA, with the joint platform are among also active market participants.

Payment giants Visa and MasterCard everyone have the proprietary application for mobile payments. Besides, PayPal has a service of mobile payments, the belonging eBay and also the developments in this area are conducted by Starbucks network. However, retailers have a serious advantage: they decide what payment methods will accept in the shops and what are not present.

Participants

Complete list of participants of Merchant Customer Exchange: 7-Eleven; Alon Brands; Best Buy; CVS/pharmacy; Darden Restaurants; HMSHost; Hy-Vee; Lowe's; Michaels Stores; Publix Super Markets; Sears Holdings; Shell Oil Products US; Sunoco; Target and Wal-Mart Stores. The annual turnover of participants makes more than $1 trillion. As expected, in the coming months other retail networks also will join them.