Over the past year, I’ve had a fast-paced immersion into the world of payments and data security. Data breaches, Bitcoin, and now Apple Pay have become subjects I’ve been asked to both write and opine about. Without the help of companies like TSYS, friend Tim Toews and partner Brian Kilcourse, I’d be flailing in the dark. At least now, some of the lights have turned on.

But, what I see in the light worries me.

Tim Cook announced Apple Pay on September 9 as part of the introduction to the iPhone 6. Available only on the new hardware, it went live on October 20. By most accounts, it works well for those who use it. I’ve been unable to come up with any kind of transaction volumes, but with a total of only ten million iPhone 6’s in circulation, I suspect volumes are quite low.

On September 3, MCX, the Walmart led retail payment consortium, announced its mobile payment platform, called CurrentC. I confess that I don’t know a lot about CurrentC. Most of what I’ve learned came from comments on my Forbes blog and via a public nastygram on Gizmoto. From what I can tell, the two technologies are very different, and CurrentC seeks to disintermediate credit card processors entirely.

Whatever rock I was living under, I also didn’t realize that Google Wallet is already live and can be used in different stores right near me. You can use it at Whole Foods Market, GameStop, Gap, Kohls, and a host of other retailers. For a full list, you can look here.

That’s the sort of simple part. But things got complex when first Rite-Aid and then CVS disabled the NFC chip readers on all their POS devices. The both opted, after the fact, to no longer support any other alternative payment besides CurrentC (due out sometime in 2015).

What was supposed to be convenient is now becoming very, very confusing.

• Rite-aid and CVS will not accept Apple Pay or Google Wallet. They will accept only credit and debit cards, and ultimately CurrentC. Walgreens is NOT part of MCX, and will accept Apple Pay
• Apple will not support Google Wallet on its iPhone 6. It’s Apple Pay or nothing (although as of this writing, CurrentC’s app will be available from the Apple store. Somehow I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one).
• Google Wallet is out and available, but uses a different technology than either Apple Pay or CurrentC.
• Whole Foods Market will accept almost anything. So, it seems will Sephora
• Apple will only accept personal credit cards from five banks (Citi, Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Capital One) plus American Express. Later this year, it will add the ‘second tier’ banks of PNC, Navy Federal, Barclaycard, USAA and US Bank. It’s unclear to me whether business cards will be included in the second round.

So as partner Nikki Baird pointed out, Apple Pay is definitely easy to use. But where to use it is not so simple and the cards you can use with it are very limited. And CVS and Rite-Aid have definitely muddied up the waters.

Why does this matter? Because consumer distrust of retailers’ ability to keep their data safe is growing by the day. While Apple’s payment technology is safe, its infrastructure has come into question with apparent hacks of celebrities’ personal iCloud accounts. Walmart is going to come along and accept NO credit cards into its “express system. ” You have to wonder…why would any consumer trust a retail consortium with his or her credit card / payment data? We certainly haven’t proven we can keep that data safe. But on we go.

Further, the list of do’s and don’ts shoppers will be forced to keep in their heads is whacky. So here’s the question we have to ask ourselves as an industry: What the heck are we doing? Are we going to confuse consumers to the point where they just stay with their existing credit cards, or only shop at places where they will be accepted?

This is a lousy time to pull consumers’ chains on payments. Maybe as an industry, we want to give this a bit more thought.