ToneTag Emerges as a Winner in Two Categories in Reserve Bank of India’s First Global Hackathon HARBINGER 2021

ToneTag, India’s fastest-growing voice-based commerce and payments solution provider successfully participated and won in two categories in RBI’s first global hackathon, “HARBINGER 2021 – Innovation for Transformation”. The Bangalore-based company uses audio technology to enable voice-based communication and payment services, has aced two categories - Non-mobile Digital Payment Solutions and Context-based Retail Payment Solutions. The event registered participation from 363 organisations globally with only 24 making it to the final round. 

As India witnessed significant growth in terms of digital payments, the aim of the first-ever global hackathon by RBI was to discover and support the business models that have the potential to make digital payments accessible to the underserved, improving payment convenience and enriching user experience while enhancing security. 

The winners in each category were selected on the basis of problem comprehension, inventiveness, solution comprehensiveness, ease of implementation, demonstration/user experience etc. ToneTag won in two categories, namely:

• Non-Mobile Digital Payment Solutions - ToneTag’s Plug & Play acoustics omnichannel solution provides a faster and autonomous payment and checkout experience to businesses and customers alike with its ground wreaking audio and voice technology. This solution enables customers to make secure and reliable peer-to-peer (P2P) or peer-to-merchant (P2M) payments on any mobile device using their voice in any language and dialect. It generates an identification code that is unique to the customer’s voice which is then used for authenticating payments. 
• Context-Based Retail Payment Solutions - ToneTag’s Plug & Play Zone is engineered to create a virtual area or ‘Sound Zone’ inside a store that can be detected by the customer’s mobile phone.  The hardware-agnostic audio and voice technology enables sound based proximity engagements and payments that are contactless, frictionless and secure. The customer can simply use their voice to select products, find their location in the store and pay the bill without having to physically interact with any store staff or cashiers. The module operates on tokenised data followed by audio encryption frameworks that allow for a completely secure transaction process.

Participating in HARBINGER 2021 provided participants with the opportunity to be mentored by industry experts, present their unique solutions to a prominent panel, and earn big rewards in each category. The hackathon was designed as a competitive event in which participants submit ideas, construct solutions, and present prototypes, and the solutions are reviewed by a panel to determine the winner(s).

Sharing his excitement on the win, Kumar Abhishek, Founder & CEO of ToneTag, said, “A hackathon by a regulator at this scale is unheard of globally. This shows why RBI is not just leading, but setting example of progressive inclusion for every other regulator.

Being felicitated in two categories at RBI’s first-ever global hackathon is a big motivation towards our vision for financial accessibility at ToneTag. We look forward to providing customers with a highly differentiated offline shopping experience and payments solution that is engaging, convenient and faster, all with the power of their voice and in a language they are comfortable with. Online or offline now checkout with voice”.