Zoosh ultra-sounds offer NFC alternative

While near-field communication (NFC) gradually emerges to turn mobile phones into payment devices, Silicon Valley start-up Naratte is introducing a system it claims can do roughly the same thing without adding a chip to the handset, reveals PCWorld.

This week, Naratte introduced Zoosh, a technology that lets phones exchange transaction information via inaudible sound waves.

As with NFC, the phone user would just put the phone near to a point-of-sale terminal to redeem a coupon or make a purchase. Naratte's approach might allow for faster deployment, but some observers raised questions about its technical and market potential.

According to ZDNet, Naratte CEO Brett Paulson points to two big benefits to doing communication this way.

First, it is cheap, since there is no additional hardware required on mobile devices. Big point-of-sale terminals, he says, can be retrofitted with microphones and speakers for about a dollar.

In addition, this NFC competitor can be rolled out to the world as a download on most existing mobile handsets.

Meanwhile, Cnet says, in addition to being used for payments, through apps that connect to PayPal or other services, Zoosh-readable audio can also be embedded in media files.

Users could receive an MMS 'coupon,' and play it back at a point of purchase to score a discount. For financial transactions, there's point-to-point security built into the protocol.

Paulson also points out that Zoosh gets very strong “elbow room security,” just by the nature of using sound as a communication channel. High-frequency sound doesn't go far, and devices can use proximity (which is discernible through the software) as a factor in authentication.