Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), the mobile commerce joint venture put together by some of America's biggest retailers, has brought in Barclaycard's Dekkers Davidson as CEO.
Davidson has a 25-year history in the mobile and financial services industries, most recently as managing director at Barclaycard US, where he launched the first cloud-based m-commerce wallet in the country.
MCX was set up a year ago by merchants, including 7-Eleven, Target and Wal-Mart, to build a mobile wallet that would enable customers to make payments in-store through their handsets.
The consortium hopes to fend off stiff mobile money competition from the likes of Google, PayPal, Square and the Isis consortium of telcos by tapping into its huge network of stores.
Once it is fully deployed, the wallet will be accepted at all MCX members, a growing group of merchants that collectively operate nearly 90,000 stores and process more than $1 trillion in payments annually.
The group has provided scant details on the technical details of the service and any potential launch date but Davidson's appointment comes on the heels of deals with tech partners FIS and Gemalto.
"The strength of the customer experience, the breadth of acceptance, and the quality and security of technology the MCX solution will offer provides MCX with a historic opportunity to improve the shopping and paying experience for customers," says Davidson.