YES BANK Ties-up with Ultracash Technologies to enable Sound Based proximity payments

Mumbai, February 17, 2016: YES BANK, India’s 5th largest private sector bank, today announced its collaboration with Ultracash Technologies to launch payments processing through Sound Waves. Ultracash utilizes novel, first of its kind technology to enable merchant and person to person proximity payments.
This partnership will enable Ultracash to issue YES BANK sponsored mobile wallets and employ YES BANK’s innovative IMPS payments platform to enable processing of instant proximity transactions. Ultracash utilizes a patent-pending technology, where payment data is securely transferred from one device to the other using unique ultra high frequency sound waves. This innovative technology ensures that Ultracash’s ‘Tap and Pay’ works on all devices and doesn’t need any special hardware to make the payment and there is no need of special NFC chips.
With over 1 Billion mobile connections resulting in 75% market penetration, India is a country poised for the mobile payments revolution. There are about 200 million estimated smart phone owners in the country. However, the limited internet connectivity is restricting the proliferation of mobile payments. Ultracash’s sound wave technology enables mobile payments to be done without the need for Internet connectivity using any of the options such as bank account and debit/credit cards. In addition, Ultracash will now be issuing YES BANK branded digital wallets to the consumers to aid quicker, seamless and friction free payments. Ultracash will be riding on the IMPS payments APIs of YES BANK to allow merchant as well as person to person payments.
This launch is expected to fuel proximity payments in India with the usage of a Smart Phone as an acquiring instrument for the merchants. Currently, there are only about 1 million POS terminals in the country for a merchant population of over 25 million. With this offering, YES BANK and Ultracash are together expecting to bring a change in the way proximity payments are done in the country.
UltraCash, which was launched in Bangalore in August 2015 is changing the way Bangaloreans pay. In this short span, UltraCash has more than 60,000 active app users who have done more than 1.2 Lac transactions amounting to Rs.10 crore in transaction value. UltraCash is currently present in more than 1000 merchants across various offline and home delivery segments.
Mr. Ritesh Pai, Senior President and Country Head – Digital Banking, YES BANK, said “Indian payments market is at a cusp of revolution and YES BANK has been at the forefront along with partners such as Ultracash to lead innovations which will be widely adopted by consumers. With this collaboration, we are expecting to change the way Merchant payments are done across the country and lead the proliferation of the digital and mobile payments to the 25 million small scale retailers.”
Vishal Lal, Co-Founder UltraCash said “UltraCash is committed to working towards moving India to a less-cash economy using technology and innovation. Our vision is to empower every merchant in this country to accept digital payment seamlessly without any hardware dependence and allow every consumer to pay in a simple and secure manner using her mobile phone from the payment instrument of her choice. We are very excited to partner with Yes Bank in this endeavor to bring about a positive change in our country and help in widespread use of digital payments.”