By Yoni Heisler
CurrentC, the mobile payment platform from the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) poised to take on Apple Pay, sent out an email on Wednesday indicating that it’s already been hacked. While the only information compromised were customer email addresses, the news couldn’t have come at a worse time for CurrentC, which has been lambasted in the media in recent days.
Over the past few days, both Rite Aid and CVS disabled support for Apple Pay across all of their nationwide locations. The reason? Both companies belong to the MCX, a consortium of companies planning to roll out their own mobile payment platform dubbed CurrentC in early 2015. Naturally, Apple Pay fans, and otherwise champions of the free market, have been absolutely vitriolic in their hatred for CurrentC. Indeed, the service isn’t yet even operational and the CurrentC app already has horrible 1-star ratings on iTunes.
In any event, the email sent out to members of CurrentC’s pilot program reads:
Thank you for your interest in CurrentC. You are receiving this message because you are either a participant in our pilot program or requested information about CurrentC. Within the last 36 hours, we learned that unauthorized third parties obtained the e-mail addresses of some of you. Based on investigations conducted by MCX security personnel, only these e-mail addresses were involved and no other information.
In an abundance of caution, we wanted to make you aware of this incident and urge you not to open links or attachments from unknown third parties. Also know that neither CurrentC nor Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) will ever send you emails asking for your financial account, social security number or other personally identifiable information. So if you are ever asked for this information in an email, you can be confident it is not from us and you should not respond.
MCX is continuing to investigate this situation and will provide updates as necessary. We take the security of your information extremely seriously, apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your support of CurrentC.
