Waltz in and out of stores while your phone makes the payments, or have your loan okayed in a few hours. It’s never been easier to borrow or spend.
If only you could walk into your favourite clothes store, pick the pieces you like, and sashay out. If only you could wave goodbye to those painful queues, especially those that lengthen during the weekends. Now, you can, and without setting offa store alarm. Now, your phone can make the payment with help from Amazon-backed ToneTag, which enables mobile payments through sound waves.
The company’s technology converts the store into a sound zone, so when you enter the store, it recognises you and your phone. Your phone, on the other hand, picks up the store ID and connects it to your payment app or card and bank seamlessly, while you are browsing through kimono-styled suits or polka-dotted dresses. The process is simple — the encrypted transaction details are sent through sound waves and the customers receive a pop-up with the transaction details. You just have to click a button to approve and complete the transaction.
While sound-zone technology is being tested across 120 stores in India, about 350,000 merchants are already using ToneTag’s tech. The big one is yet to take effect — e-commerce giant Amazon is working to integrate the technology into its app to enable payments at offline stores. Google Pay, too, uses sound waves for money transfers, but that’s only from one mobile to another.
ToneTag has built software that lets your phone, even a feature phone, chat with any payment device in the store. “We are the first company to enable sound wave based payments through existing card machines without any hardware changes,” says Kumar Abhishek, founder and CEO.
This story is from the OLB Issue 5 July 2019 edition of Outlook Business.
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This story is from the OLB Issue 5 July 2019 edition of Outlook Business.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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