ToneTag is a company that provides sound-based contactless payment solutions to merchants and sellers. Tech Mahindra’s MoboMoney already has adopted ToneTag’s expertise in their mobile wallet app.
Now, even as contactless payments in India are not as big as the Government had hoped them to be, ToneTag offers that service that only requires sound waves, and no NFC. A proprietary Software Development Kit(SDK) is used to integrate at both the merchant side(point of sale) and at the customer’s side through the mobile wallet or banking applications. For a transaction to happen, both the merchant and customer will have to use ToneTag integrated devices.
This partnership with ToneTag will now allow Shoppers Stop to allow customers to make cashless, cardless and contactless payments for their purchases. All 84 Shoppers Stop stores across India have got this infrastructure installed already.
“Our collaboration with ToneTag is yet another step in the direction of digitising all our Shoppers Stop stores. Our paramount focus is to offer our customers a convenient, fast and enhanced shopping experience. With ToneTag’s sound-based technology, our customers will now have multiple payment options for a smooth, fast and convenient shopping experience,” said Govind Shrikhande, Customer Care Associate & Managing Director, Shoppers Stop Ltd.
To use ToneTag at Shoppers Stop, either you need to have MoboMoney installed on your phone, or ToneTag app from Google Play Store and Apple iTunes Store. The tone from your app will be received on the device in Shoppers Stop, confirming your purchase after you enter the PIN.
Will ToneTag payments be preferred over cards and mobile wallets?
The ultimate reason someone would go for contactless payments would be a convenience, and ToneTag hasn’t been able to engage its customers or ramp up its operations across India.
While cards, mobile wallets and recently Samsung Pay are getting bigger in India, sound-based contactless transactions haven’t been able to make any dent in the system, even post demonetization. This simply has to do with the fact that sound-based transaction will take as much time as a card-based transaction, and there is no need to download an app for using cards.
Another reason is that merchants are not ready to upgrade their POS machines and install an additional SDK for ToneTag. Additionally, customers have said that sometimes the machine does not recognise the sound, and while entering the PIN, the app gets timed out.
Source: ET
