Contactless payment platform ToneTag has reportedly raised between $8m and $10m in its latest funding round.
The investment was led by Amazon and MasterCard, with participation also coming from existing backers Manipal Global Education charman Mohandas Pai and PremjiInvest CIO TK Kurien, according to a report by Deal Street Asia, which cites people ‘aware of the development.’ The company is also in talks with strategic investors, it said.
India-based ToneTag already has an existing partnership with MasterCard and is working to integrate its solution with Amazon, the article states.
The company uses sound-wave communications to enable payments and proximity customer engagement services on any device. The solution works by encoding data into sound waves which are transmitted between devices. To ensure security the information has three encryption layers using blockchain and tokenisation.
Its technology enables mobile apps, POS terminals and ATMs to process contactless payments via sound, and without the need of hardware upgrades.
Alongside this, the platform is able to bolster customer engagement as its technology can pinpoint a customer’s location in a store, as soon as they enter. Once it has located a customer, it retrieves their data, such as loyalty status, previous interactions, and demographic, which can be used to deliver personalised offers and information.
This investment comes months after it was reported ToneTag raised a $1.33m funding round. Tropical Star led the previous equity injection, which brought the company’s total funding efforts to $2.3m.
Amazon has been active in India’s FinTech space over recent months – just this week, the organisation led the $12m round of online insurance platform Acko. Last month, Amazon led the $22m Series C extension of working capital provider Capital Float, supporting the company with developing new product offerings.
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