Apple Pay rival for testing

A retailer-backed rival to Apple’s Apple Pay mobile wallet will be tested with customers in a handful of stores in the next few weeks, ratcheting up competition in an increasingly cluttered market.

CurrentC was developed by a consortium of retailers under the Merchant Customer Exchange, which includes Wal-Mart Stores, Target and Best Buy.

The mobile wallet will appear in stores of about half a dozen retailers in Columbus, Ohio, MCX chief executive Brian Mooney said.