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  3. Cash, credit or debit? You may one day have far more choices to make at the checkout counter. A group of big retailers, includin

Cash, credit or debit? You may one day have far more choices to make at the checkout counter. A group of big retailers, includin

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问题     Cash, credit or debit? You may one day have far more choices to make at the checkout counter. A group of big retailers, including 7-Eleven, Best Buy, CVS and Wal-Mart, said on Wednesday that they were forming a company that would offer a way for customers to pay for purchases with their smartphones, joining a wide array of businesses seeking a piece of this market.
    Other than announcing the formation of the payment network, to be called Merchant Customer Exchange, the companies gave few details about how their mobile system would work or when it would be released. They said that their payment application would be available for virtually any smartphone, and that it would use a secure technology to process transactions. Fourteen companies so far have agreed to help develop the mobile wallet system, and more are expected to join the alliance later.
    Michael A. Cook, vice president and assistant treasurer of Wal-Mart, said the merchants in the group, which have $ 1 trillion in annual sales, knew people’s shopping habits and payment preferences, so it made sense for them to work together.
    The announcement came a week after Starbucks said it was teaming up with Square, a start-up company that lets people make purchases with their smartphones. Howard D. Schultz, chief executive of Starbucks, joined Square’s board. Some speculated that this partnership risked alienating other big retailers, by giving Starbucks influence over how Square’s payment system was developed. In addition to Square and similar start-ups, many types of businesses are hoping to make a grab at the mobile wallet market, including phone carriers, credit card companies and big tech companies like Google and Microsoft.
    While competition in a market is typically a good thing, giving consumers many different options to make a mobile payment could leave them baffled. Charles S. Golvin, a Forrester analyst who focuses on mobile technology. said that in order for a mobile wallet product to gain at traction, it would need to be an open system that allowed customers to pay for anything, anywhere.
    Mr. Golvin said the newly announced merchants’ payment network seemed as if it could gain traction with customers who shop regularly at the businesses that are part of the group. But he added that it did not seem likely to generate a compelling product that would give the idea of mobile payments the push it needed. " It does not strike me as a driver for the fundamental shift to mobile payments that the industry at large is counting on," he said.  
In Paragraph 4, the author implies that the alliance of Starbucks and Square______.
选项 A、may create a whole-new mobile payment system
B、may have stimulated the alignment of the big retailers
C、may accelerate the development of mobile wallet system
D、may be a threat to profits of current mobile service providers
答案B
解析 推断题。由题干定位到第四段第二句，该句提到，星巴克和Square结成了联盟，紧接着第三句指出“this partnership risked alienating other big retailers”，这种合作关系让其他大型零售商感到有被孤立的风险。而接着第四句提到，这些商家都希望从移动支付平台这一市场中谋取一定的利润。再结合本段第一句提示，多家大型零售商联合推出移动支付平台是在这两家商户合作之后的一个星期，可得知，星巴克和Square的合作对后面这几家商户的联合多少有些刺激的作用，故[B]符合逻辑，为本题答案。根据第四段第三句的后半句，两家的联合使得星巴克对Square支付系统如何发展会产生影响，但并不是要开发新系统，故排除[A]。[C]为空穴来风，文章只提到星巴克会影响Square原有支付体系，并没有谈到这对于整个移动支付系统的发展有何影响，因此排除[C]。[D]为过度推断，文章只是说两者的联合让其他商户感觉到竞争的危机，但是并没有暗示对其他移动服务商的利益有什么威胁。
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