The would-be Apple Pay competitor created by a bunch of big retailers just switched CEOs

Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), the big business-backed company behind the forthcoming CurrentC mobile payments service that's going to compete fiercely with Apple Pay when it officially launches later this year, just swapped CEOs.

Outgoing MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson will be replaced by Brian V. Mooney, who was most recently CEO and a board member of Bank of America Merchant Services. Davidson will be "pursuing other opportunities," according to a press release.

This news comes just one day after the news broke that Best Buy and Discover, both big supporters of MCX and CurrentC, were breaking ranks to begin working with Apple Pay.

MCX is going so hard against Apple Pay that several of the member stores have blocked or disabled the NFC antennae that cash registers need to use it. CurrentC, which uses a barcode system, remains unaffected. The message is clear: CurrentC, cash, credit, or nothing.

And while both Best Buy and Discover are still hedging their bets and keeping on with their involvement with MCX, it's yet another blow to CurrentC, which had an underwhelming soft launch later last year (TechCrunch called it "clunky") and was hacked shortly afterwards.

Meanwhile, Apple Pay numbers are nothing to write home about just yet, but it's fast-growing. And Google is very likely planning to announce an update to its own Google Wallet mobile payments system later this year.

In other words, Mooney has his work cut out for him.