Chili’s Grill & Bar and Southwest Airlines will be joining many others on the growing list.
The Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), which is the proposed American m-commerce network that was spearheaded by large nationwide retailers such as 7-Eleven Best Buy, Walmart, and Target, will be adding a number of additional companies to its list.
The MCX is continuing to expand its size and has now announced the latest to be included on the network.
Among the latest additions to this m-commerce network will be Brinker International (the parent company of Maggiano’s Little Italy, and Chili’s Grill & Bar, Southwest Airlines, RaceTrac, and Pacific Convenience & Fuels. These companies will now be supporters of the upcoming mobile wallet that the network is developing.
The m-commerce network currently includes over 30 merchant brands which represent more than $1 trillion in annual sales.
The thirty different m-commerce brands represent 80,000 stores as well as over 4 million employees across the country. They also generate over 700 million customer and payment accounts. Earlier in 2013, Hobby Lobby Stores, QuikTrip, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Meijer, and Wawa were all added to the list of companies that are included on this network.
The MCX m-commerce wallet is a cloud based system that is being designed to support transactions that use barcodes, such as QR codes. It will function on the Allynis Mobile Payment platform from Gemalto, a digital security firm. The software will be leveraged by the network in order to be able to provide branded apps.
According to MCX, all of the merchant m-commerce members will be accepting its mobile wallet transactions once this service has reached its complete deployment. Further to capabilities for making payments, the wallet will also integrate with promotions, offers, loyalty programs, and location based services.
The partners initially revealed their intentions in m-commerce in the middle of 2012. Since then, the companies have not been thrilled by the progress that Google and Isis have been making, and they are working to take more control of the customer experience in mobile. They believe that this will help to eliminate the “clunky” method that is common in the digital payment process.
