The Merchant Customer Exchange, a company formed by the nation's leading merchants to develop a customer-centric and secure mobile payment solution, Wednesday unveiled the brand of its new mobile payment network — CurrentC.

The network will be available next year across a broad and growing collection of leading merchants in the big-box, convenience, pharmacy, fuel, grocery, dining, travel and specialty-retail categories, according to a press release. Consumers will gain access to the entire CurrentC network and all its benefits by using the CurrentC app as well as through merchants' mobile applications that utilize CurrentC functionality.

CurrentC has been launched in private pilot mode in select locations across the country. The private pilot will expand through 2014, with regional and national rollouts to follow in 2015.

"CurrentC will offer customers a simpler, faster, secure way to check out at their favorite merchants," MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson said in a statement. "At full scale, CurrentC will be accepted in more than 110,000 merchant locations across the country, giving consumers unmatched access to their favorite retailers. It will also offer innovative features and benefits, such as merchant loyalty programs and instant coupon savings, all stored on the phone and available right at the point of sale."

The CurrentC mobile wallet app will be free to download through both the App Store and Google Play store, and is compatible with major smartphones. MCX said in the announcement CurrentC is intended to simplify and expedite the customer checkout process by applying qualifying offers and coupons, participating merchant rewards, loyalty programs and membership accounts, and offering payment options through the consumer's selected financial account, all with a single scan. 

Some of the features of CurrentC include the following, according to the announcement:

• Save money with valuable coupons and offers. CurrentC will store and automatically apply exclusive offers, coupons and promotions from participating merchants during the payment process.
• Earn rewards from participating merchant loyalty programs. CurrentC will allow customers to simplify and organize all participating merchant loyalty cards and membership accounts in one app. Existing rewards, once entered, are detected, applied and earned automatically during the transaction.
• Pay simply. CurrentC will offer customers the freedom to pay with a variety of financial accounts, including personal checking accounts, merchant gift cards and select merchant-branded credit and debit accounts. Additional payment options will be available in the coming months.
• A more secure way to pay. CurrentC will provide a more secure payment experience than traditional methods, the company said, by storing users' sensitive financial information in its cloud vault rather than locally on the mobile device. Furthermore, the application uses a token placeholder to facilitate transactions instead of constantly passing the data between the user, merchant and financial institution.

"The CurrentC Network will provide merchants with unparalleled reach and resources in the mobile payments category," Davidson said. "It will offer merchants new and exciting channels to engage with customers, strengthen relationships, and enjoy more control of transaction data." 

CurrentC is a software-based product that works with most existing point-of-sale and payment terminals, according to the announcement. CurrentC will use what MCX calls a secure paycode and will not require additional hardware from most customers or merchants.