BOSTON — CurrentC, the long-awaited mobile-wallet solution from Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), is ready for beta testing in roughly a half dozen stores in the Columbus, Ohio, market, according to Brian Mooney, the new CEO of the consortium. But a wider launch may not happen until next year.

“We are currently in a beta with several of our merchants and employees, and we will now extend that beta to the public in the next few weeks,” Mooney recently told Reuters. He did not specify the names or types of the merchants.

The company will not rush a wider rollout if the product is not ready, Mooney said in an interview with technology and e-commerce website re/code.

“This is a long game,” Mooney said. “Certainly going faster is always better—that’s not necessarily a debatable point. But we’re going to do it right.”

MCX has nearly 60 merchant members in its stable, including Walmart and Target, and convenience-store merchants include 76, 7-Eleven, Alon Brands, Circle K, Conoco, ExxonMobil, GetGo, Kum & Go, My Goods Market, Phillips 66, QuikTrip, RaceTrac, Sheetz, Shell, Sunoco and Wawa. Additional merchants include major grocery, restaurant and specialty retailers.

CurrentC will join Apple Pay, Google Wallet, Android Pay, PayPal, Square and others in an increasingly crowded mobile-wallet market this just got bigger.

On August 13, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., unveiled Samsung Pay, a secure mobile payment service that consumers can use to make purchases nearly everywhere cards are accepted. The company will launch Samsung Pay in Korea on August 20 and in the United States on September 28, with plans to launch in the U.K., Spain and China, with partners to be named in each market.

Samsung Pay will be preloaded on select Galaxy S6 edge+ and Galaxy Note5 devices and it will roll out a free software upgrade this month.

Meanwhile, Rite Aid—a member of MCX—has announced that all of its nearly 4,600 drug stores nationwide will begin accepting mobile payments, including Apple Pay and Google Wallet, starting August 15. It will also accept Google’s forthcoming Android Pay.

Boston-based MCX is building a customer-focused and security-driven mobile payment solution that it believes will deliver a better payment and shopping experience for customers and merchants. MCX’s owner-members include leaders in the big-box, convenience-store, pharmacy, fuel, grocery, quick-service restaurant (QSR) and full-service dining, specialty-retail and travel categories. Collectively, these companies operate more than 110,000 locations and process more than $1 trillion in payments annually.

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