A mobile payment rival to Apple Pay backed by US retail giants such as Wal-Mart and Target has been tested internally and will get a trial next month in stores, according to Bloomberg.

The new service, which is called CurrentC and is backed by a consortium called Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), is under pressure to act because its leading competitors are already commercially active.

A spokesman for US retailer Lowe’s said the consortium will formally launch the CurrentC app in Q3 although Lowe’s itself will not be in the vanguard.

Scott Rankin, MCX’s chief operating officer, said public tests will start this year, without being more specific.

“We expect there to be more than one successful player in mobile payments, and we expect to be one of them,” said Rankin, a former executive at Staples.