Tone Tag: Key to Wireless Payments

• 10 March 2018 | 1890 Views | By Mint2Save

Tone Tag has an aggressive stance in the wireless payment era by not only partnering with various technology companies, but also by entering into mutual contracts with various banks and payment providers. This banking of things based company uses sound based data transmission for information interchange. The company has been known for using this technology for high tech financial transactions and on the go payments.

With all the recent updates in financial sector relating to technology, very recently we told you about the incredible technology Soundpays, which uses sound waves to make payment.  Another company working on similar lines is ToneTag. A fin-tech startup founded in 2013 in Bengaluru, India by Mr.Abhishek Kumar, who has worked with big tech companies like Infosys, MindTree and IBM and Mr. Vivek Singh, a chartered accountant by qualification and overlooking the finance department at ToneTag. This company particularly gained popularity after the demonetization drive in India.

As of now, ToneTag has a 47-member team continuously working to bring innovation and up-gradation to its technology. The companies lead investors include companies like Reliance Capital and Tropical Star Limited. But what caught attention towards this company was their feature to make payments not just using smartphones but very simple and basic feature phones as well. Let’s get further insights into this company.

What is Tone Tag?

Tone Tag is a sound-wave based communication tech platform which allows payments and proximity customer engagement services on any device, independent of the instrument or the infrastructure be it any device like Laptops, PCs, Tablets, EDCs, mPOS, smartphones and even simple feature phones where no internet is required on user device at time of initiating payment. The Tone Tag’s patented Software Development Kit (SDK) is platform independent, allowing online contactless payments over the existing payment ecosystem. With just a tap on a Tone Tag-enabled PoS terminal, a consumer can make transactions easily and instantly.  

Features of Tone Tag

• Highly Secure: Tone Tag uses a 3-layer encryption protocol using Blockchain and Tokenization to ensure that data integrity is never compromised. Thus making it highly secure.
• Simple Integration: As it works on the existing infrastructure, hence only a simple software is required to enable it to operate on any device.
• Highly interoperable: Tone Tag converts the data into sound waves which are then transmitted between the devices making it highly interoperable.
• Scalability: It is highly scalable and can be used to solve several real-world problems.
• Cost effective: Tone Tag technology is highly affordable as it does not require any additional infrastructure investments from merchants and retailers and can be enabled with just a software upgrade.

More about Tone Tag

In 2016, after India faced a huge cash crunch following the demonetization of Indian currency and to support the digital cashless economy initiative of the government, Tone Tag introduced mobile payment facility on feature phones as well. This was done to help consumers in small towns to go cashless with minimal digital knowledge. The technology enabled anyone with a standard phone to make cashless payments seamlessly without having to download any app or worrying about the internet connectivity. This technology could be used for contact-less money withdrawals from ATMs, cashless payments at toll plazas and parking, and mobile payments at railway ticket counters as well. With this technology, even the small town and rural consumers became part of digital payment drive by just dialing Tone Tag toll-free number 180030101887.

Later, to accelerate this digital drive, Tone Tag introduced “Tone Tag Audio Pod”- a device that can be used by any merchant irrespective of their scale or nature of the business. Using the ToneTag’s Audio Pod is as simple as just tapping a phone on a Pod to complete a transaction. Tone Tag Audio Pod enables quick and faster checkout at stores, with transactions being completed within just three seconds.

Tone Tag has partnered with several banks, issuers & acquirers, toll plazas, parking operators etc. for payment solutions and many retailers for payment solutions and locating and engaging the customers. Some of the ToneTag partners include Freecharge, ICICI pockets, YES Bank, Airtel, Shoppers Stop etc. With two leading PoS terminal makers – Ingenico and VeriFone -already in its client’s list, the company expects that sound will soon become a standard for digital payments.

Tone Tag reportedly has around 50 million plus consumers and around 2,50,000 plus merchants, who use their technology to receive payments. Payments through Tone Tag are highly secure and allow businesses to restructure their payment process by providing a smooth transaction experience for both the customer and the retailers, hence making the situation easy at both the ends.

A unique feature about Tone Tag is its use of blockchain technology to detect and prevent fraud and error in its payments. Tone Tag was one of the first companies ever to introduce blockchain technology to contactless payments globally. While paying through Tone Tag, customers can identify whether the merchants that they are dealing with is exposed to risks or if the merchant has witnessed any fraudulent transactions in the past. Similarly, merchants can confirm whether a customer is genuine or not. They can detect if the transaction they are entering into is unusual or if the customer was involved in fraudulent transactions earlier since all transactions are validated via public ledger. No party has any kind of upper hand when all the transactions are recorded in a blockchain, providing unmatched security to contactless and peer-to-peer payments.

Tone Tag has till now filed 7 global patents for a variety of exciting use cases in the payments environment and the offline retail space. Tone Tag’s revenues are majorly based on the licensing fee that they charge to their partners for the use of their technologies. The company also charges a small fee for every transaction through their platform. In the near future, ToneTag aims to increase their revenues primarily through increasing the number of transactions.

Tone Tag is the first and the only company to provide contactless payment acceptance on EDC gears using sound waves and being the first one in this kind, Tone Tag is definitely to be a leader in sound based contactless payment.

In September 2017, Infosys Finacle, part of Edge Verve Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Infosys, announced a partnership with ToneTag. Through this partnership, Finacle and ToneTag will offer a joint solution that will leverage the latter’s sound wave technology to enable proximity payments and interactions.