CEO Perspective: Promoting Competition Drives Growth

Jason Oxman
October 30, 2014 – Let’s talk about competition.

Payments is in the news this week as two large retailers (members of the MCX mobile payments consortium) shut off NFC-enabled terminals that had permitted their customers to use Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and SoftCard mobile payments services.  Published reports said the decision was mandated by contract terms that bar all MCX participants from accepting any other mobile payments services.

So should retailers be required to accept every payments product?  Of course not.  ETA member companies compete for retail customers based on the superior capabilities of their products.  Our only concern is that the market must be fair and open to competition.  So when we learn that MCX requires its members to block all other mobile payments products, that causes concern.  MCX has some powerful and sophisticated companies behind it and will no doubt have a great product when it launches next year. But like everyone else, they should compete on the strength of their product, not on their ability to enforce a blockade of competitors.

I heard the interesting observation today that despite MCX’s serial bad news this week (questions about exclusivity and boycott-enforcing fines were quickly followed by news of an MCX data breach), all this coverage has one positive benefit for MCX:  it is being positioned as a primary competitor for Apple Pay.  At ETA, we’ve invited MCX execs to speak to ETA audiences for two years because we’re as eager as everyone else to see what CurrentC looks like.  After all, competition and innovation are the hallmarks of the payments technology industry that ETA represents.

Jason Oxman is the CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association.