ToneTag is making waves with soundwave-based payments technology

Kumar Abhishek, founder & CEO of Bengaluru-based ToneTag, saw opportunities in this payments space way back in 2012

Authentication is a big part of every internet service in use today. There is authentication of documents for a job, authentication of fingerprints for Aadhaar-related services and, most importantly, authentication of identity for just about anything where money transaction is involved.

In 2012, using soundwaves for authentication of payments, probably, had not matured enough, especially in India. But that did not deter Kumar Abhishek, then a business consultant with Infosys, from looking at this technology to facilitate contactless payments. His Bengaluru-based firm, ToneTag, has a team of just about 120 people today. But its solutions are already making waves in India and several global markets, the latest being Japan. 

The idea to start something like this came to Abhishek when he was still working with Infosys, consulting in areas like retail, financial services and banking. One of his colleagues observed that people in India mostly got candies as change when they paid in cash. This struck the young engineer, who had just put around five years in working with some of the IT services firms like IMB and Mindtree, as an opportunity. He spent almost a year understanding the market and the viability of using sound waves for cashless transactions. And the idea fructified towards the end of 2012, when he launched ToneTag, which enables contactless payments on mobile phones, card swiping machines, automated teller machines (ATMs) and other payment-enabling devices, using sound waves.

The technology is proprietary. It is almost ingenuous to use voice-waves for authentication, which is a lot more secure and faster than traditional methods like passwords. Take point of sale (PoS) machines for example. Instead of swiping a debit card and keying in the PIN number, a user can just hover her smartphone over a ToneTag-enabled PoS machine and, using the low-frequency sound emitted between the two devices, the transaction is complete.

Imagine a restaurant where a user does not have to get up from the table to pay. She can use ToneTag system right from her seat. A similar application can be enabled for buying tickets on a bus journey or toll payments.

The unique selling proposition of ToneTag lies in enabling any device (with or without internet) with voice-capture capability to accept sound-based payments or exchange any information securely as required. The company holds around 13 patents for this technology.

A big endorsement to his business acumen came in 2018 when global payments major Mastercard and world's largest e-commerce firm Amazon put around $10 million in the company. The deal resulted in both becoming customers of ToneTag.

Earlier, ToneTag had raised funds from Manipal Global Education Chairman Mohandas Pai, PremjiInvest's chief investment officer T K Kurien and Facebook executive Anand Chandrasekaran.

Over the past few years, the company has impressed several corporates who have implemented ToneTag technology for various use cases. According to its website, ToneTag is currently used by Amazon, YES Bank, HDFC Bank, Reliance Retail and Airtel among others, and is enabled at some Shoppers Stop outlets, NICE Toll Plazas, and for certain customers of Infosys' core banking software Finacle. 

The company claims that over 300,000 merchants, including some in international markets like Japan, West Asia and South Africa, use its services. Foreign markets now account for almost 60 per cent of this Bengaluru-based startup's client base.