MINNEAPOLIS — At a time when the future of mobile payments is still up for grabs, Best Buy and Target have aligned themselves with a competitor to Apple Pay.

But the Minnesota companies, two of the nation’s largest retailers, are also watching to see how Apple’s recently launched mobile payment system catches on with consumers.

Target last month became one of the first retailers to begin quietly testing a technology known as CurrentC, created by a group of retailers called the Merchant Customer Exchange.

Eddie Baeb, a spokesman for the Minneapolis-based retailer, confirmed that a group of Target’s headquarters employees has been trying out the CurrentC app in a couple of dozen Target stores.

“Right now, it’s in a very early test phase,” he added, noting there has been no date set to roll it out to the public.

The stated aim of Merchant Customer Exchange has been to find a simple and secure way for customers to easily make purchases in stores with their smartphones since other mobile wallets had not yet taken off.

But the mobile payment network found itself in the hot seat last week when it was revealed the exchange apparently required its members to not accept other forms of mobile payments such as Apple Pay. It didn’t help matters that its system was hacked last week and e-mail addresses of those in the pilot program were compromised, raising questions about its security.

Target was one of the first members of the Merchant Customer Exchange when it was formed in 2011. Best Buy joined it a year later.

In September, the exchange announced that it had developed CurrentC, which was being tested privately, and planned to launch it nationwide next year.