Apple Pay was launched on October 20, 2014 as an app to facilitate payments, where customers had to just hold their iPhone 6 and 6 plus gadgets close to the readers installed in stores to complete transactions.

According to many anonymous retailers who are a part of MCX, the main hitch is in their contractual agreement at MCX, where heavy fines would be levied if they allowed rival mobile payment systems like Apple Pay.

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Retailers such as Taco Bell and Starbucks, although not part of MCX, are also refusing Apple Pay as they are considering their own mobile payment systems.

While it doesn’t seem likely that these rivals would not want the mobile wallet system to become popular, they might be looking to back their own system, CurrentC, more than anything else. This mobile wallet app helps them gather information about their customer and also allows them to circumvent the high processing fees involved with credit cards.

Customer’s store-specific credit cards and bank accounts will be directly connected to CurrentC. Nevertheless, it will only be coming out in 2015.

Even Target, which was associated with Apple earlier regarding online payments, refuses to entertain Apple Pay now. But some big chains, such as Macy’s, MacDonald’s and Foot Locker, do accept Apple Pay.

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Meanwhile, merchants risk consumer ire if they keep boycotting Apple Pay. On the other hand, if Apple Pay becomes popular, CurrentC wouldn’t hold any interest to the consumer.

CurrentC was first announced two years ago for retailers to get together with their own mobile payment system, which would link the customer’s bank account directly without having to deal with credit card hassles, such as high processing fees.

But CurrentC has its own critics who claim that Apple Pay is easier to use. CurrentC relies on a type of bar code called QR code, which has to be scanned for a transaction to register. This is also in the form of an app that needs to be downloaded from none other than Apple’s App store.

Conversely, Apple Pay takes the help of near-field communication technology that comes with every iPhone 6 and above model. Here customers need not even unlock their iPhones to use Apple Pay, but have to just hold their phones near the installed readers.

Defending the retailers’ choice, general counsel of retail lobbying group The National Retail Federation, Mallory Duncan, said: “It is easy to second guess why a specific retailer chooses one technology or another, or what payments they will or will not accept, but you can be sure that the bottom line consideration is what is best for their company and their consumer.”