Is this (finally) the end of MCX?

When the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) deal with JPMorgan Chase made news last fall, it was clearly important. The country’s largest bank was teaming up with merchants, and taking on the card networks. Now it seems Chase Pay will be the only place outside Columbus, Ohio that MCX technology actually reaches points of sale.

Chase Pay is due out sometime in 2016 (though it’s not clear exactly when) and it is adding merchants like Shell, the first MCX company to formally ink a deal with the megabank’s mobile payment platform. Other MCX merchants may follow suit, but that is also not clear.

The CurrentC test MCX was running in Ohio’s capital ended this week, and whatever the results, the CurrentC accounts taking part in the beta are being disabled as of June 28.

Last month, shortly after Walmart Pay began its rollout, MCX announced it was cutting staff and delaying the rollout of CurrentC. Tom Noyes, CEO of payments data firm Commerce Signals, noted that outside Chase Pay, “MCX is dead.” Regarding the latest CurrentC news he noted the advantageous deal is enough to keep a zombie MCX shambling forward. Chase Paymentech will process Chase Pay (and MCX) transactions at 0 basis points. Noyes elaborates on the tweet below in this post.

The weird messaging behind death/future of MCX all driven by keeping the JPMC Chase Pay discounts in tact. 0bps is nice to keep.

— Tom Noyes (@noyesclt) June 8, 2016

The mobile payments space hasn’t gotten any less complex. The various parties remain — handset manufacturers, merchants, banks, networks, and tech companies — and it’s still not clear which, if any, will come to dominate the market, or why.