From Marketplace Tech:
Target, Walmart, Lowe's, 7-11, Best Buy, a whole bunch of big retailers are teaming up on a new mobile payment system. It's called Merchant Customer Exchange or MCX and it will let you pay for things using your smartphone. They're not the only ones trying this. Google has the Google Wallet system. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are planning to launch one soon as well...All these mobile payment systems want to win this race because the prize is pretty big. No, the prize isn't getting to help people and it's not even the sales, at least not right away. It's the data. Bill Maurer runs the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at U.C. Irvine and says, "Who's buying, what the market segments are, where they are, what kind of things they're buying and how the information that's captured at the point of sale can be leveraged for things like offers, loyalty, rewards, and that kind of thing."

For the full story and audio recording, please visit http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/why-retailers-are-teaming-mobile-...