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The Merchant Customer Exchange Network seems to be gathering steam – and participants – as it rolls towards some future release date. Though the larger merchants that are joining, such as Kohl’s, garner the most press, an article from Mobile Commerce Daily reports smaller merchants are attracted to the network as well:

Small merchants have been in the mobile payment space for quite some time as well using point-of-sale services such as Square, Intuit and PayAnywhere, but the fragmentation in the mobile point-of-sale space continues to grow.

The proposition for small merchants with MCX is to consolidate the number of payment options for consumers that often also shop at big-name retailers and restaurants.

Smaller merchants may also be finding that the processors that handle their business are integrating to the network on behalf of larger merchants, and as a result, may be marketing MCX in order to help distribute early implementation cost concessions.

It’s possible that should MCX prove to be even moderately successful in market, that it will spur a rapid round of consolidation/exit strategies from the widely disparate group of solutions out in the market. The industry has been waiting for that one killer app to show up and MCX has been careful not to show its hand too soon, as it is as vulnerable to emerging payments-related weaknesses as other big-name entrants have been in the market.