New Mobile Payments To Use Sound Waves Instead Of NFC?

It’s a bit odd how NFC has barely taken off, let alone gained popularity among the masses before a newer technology has emerged, looking to usurp NFC’s current hold on the mobile payment system. This technology unlike NFC requires no setup or any additional hardware (like how NFC would require a NFC chip) but rather it relies on a software-based sound wave transfer protocol.

The technology is known as Zoosh and it uses “acoustic baseband in the software” to connect and complete the transactions. The data transfer speed is said to be slower than Bluetooth or WiFi but due to the small transfers required for mobile payments, the speed should be fast enough. The sound waves that are required to perform the transfers can be embedded into MMS’s or audio files and can also double as a coupon of sorts, which pretty much means that technically any phone that is capable of receiving MMS or storing and playing back audio files will be able to make use of Zoosh.

Narette, the company behind Zoosh also claims that thanks to the ultrasonic sound waves which are high in frequency, the distance that is travelled is not very far, which means in terms of security it makes it less vulnerable to interceptions, and since security and trust is one of the reasons people are unwilling to embrace NFC technology, perhaps this may be one of the features that Zoosh can use to sell its idea.