Infosys offers sound-based payment solution

Bengaluru, Sep 22 (IANS) IT major Infosys on Friday announced partnership with software services provider ToneTag to offer sound-based payment solution to bank customers using its financial product Finacle.

"Using our joint sound-based contactless payment solution, banks will be able to allow their customers to authenticate transactions at their branches, ATMs and retail outlets," it said in a statement here.

The city-based ToneTag provides near-field communications (NFC), payments and location-based services using sound wave technology.

"The solution will enable consumers make payments by tapping their mobile phones at merchant locations and improve their shopping experience," the statement said.

The solution will be available on all mobile devices, including feature phones connected through Finacle mobile banking and Finacle digital wallet.

With the solution, banks will be able to also offer contactless payments on traditional point-of-sale machines without any hardware device.

The sound-based technology will enable exchange of information for payment processing between the point-of-sale machines and consumers' phone.

"Based on information, consumers can approve the transaction on their phone without sharing the card or account details with the merchant," said the statement.

ToneTag's contactless technology and the biometrics authentication of Finacle like fingerprint or facial recognition will enable consumers to have frictionless shopping.

"In the emerging NFC-based payments ecosystem, banks are relegated as the back-end payment utility provider. The sound wave based payment solution offers an opportunity for banks to control the last-mile transaction without capital investments," said Infosys Finacle Chief Business Officer Sanat Rao.

ToneTag Founder Kumar Abhishek said customer experience, security and interoperability would be key to financial service applications.

"We bring all of these to the forefront and integration with Finacle will place our innovation into the hands of about 800 million consumers across 94 countries," he added.