Gourab comes with over 20 years of extensive experience in Project, Operations, Business Development & CRM. He is a A keen strategist with expertise in managing entire operations with key focus on top & bottom line profitability by ensuring optimal utilization of resources. At ToneTag he has played a key role over the years in Breaking new avenues & driving growth.
Since the inception of Digital India, we have witnessed numerous innovations trying to take over in-store payment methods. These methods include digital wallets, QR code payments, reward points, net banking, chip cards, e-vouchers, among many others. With time, these methods have gained a lot of traction and are almost universally accepted. Most of these payment platforms are unnecessarily dependent on hardware and internet connectivity requirements. Network, being the most variable component in terms of availability, makes the latest innovation of sound waves technology a futuristic alternative. The sound-based Payment method is considered as the revolution in the entire retail payment sector of the world.
Soundwave-based payment systems create an array of improved and more secure payment platforms by using simple rules of physics that virtually make soundwaves carry the money through frequency. They do not require any medium to travel and can work efficiently without internet connectivity or communication tools such as NFC or smartphones.
Payment tools like NFC require expensive hardware and are not used widely among medium and small-scale retailers or vendors. Though there is a wide range of digital payment solutions available in India, the biggest democracy is just 24% penetrated by digital payments, according to the global survey of Pew Research Center. Moreover, only a handful of smartphone holders in the country are well-acquainted with technologies such as RFID, Infrared, Bluetooth, UPI, etc.
Amid the 4th Industrial Revolution, where modern technologies are blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres, things are on a brighter side for companies in the digital payments sector. Soundwave technology, for example, is one such development that is addressing this change. This technology facilitates a universally scalable and cost-effective means of payment by leveraging the benefits of cash-based and digital payment methods by using any phone present in the world.
New-age payments service providers like ToneTag are accumulating the best innovations in making sound-based transactions a reality. Its revolutionary ‘Retail Pod’ allows merchants to accept payments by seamlessly tapping the device on it. In fact, it is the first low-cost digital PoS solution that accepts payments from any phone, smartphone, and feature phone. It also acts as an engagement device between merchants and brands.
India, a country with less than 95 million people who transact digitally in a country of 1.3 billion, will now accelerate toward being cashless with technologies such as Retail Pod. It is a device with an interoperable payment and reconciliation feature, which any merchant can easily use, irrespective of infrastructural and geographical set-up and scale of operations. This soundwave-based device is a safe device-to-device connector. The Retail Pod provides the merchants with audio-visual acknowledgment of payments and status updates. ToneTag has a customized dashboard in-app that allows the merchants to view and keep track of their daily transactions and the settlement of reconciliation details. Retail Pod can also be a platform for merchants to earn extra money through paid ventures with FMCG, Major brands, Banks, and NBFCs by promoting their latest offers or schemes introduced recently.
In the culmination of the stated necessity of sound-based payments, Tone Tag payments will enable a wider and inclusive ecosystem. It will impact how interactions occur in the sales funnel, between products and individuals through business networking and interaction, and in internal communications. In addition to merchant payments, this technology can even facilitate P2P money transfer between two feature mobile devices without internet connectivity.
With 668.3 million users estimated to rely on Soundwave technology by the next 2-3 years, cash usage as a mode of payment might get completely replaced unless obsolete.