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Ultrasonic Payments

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Re: Ultrasonic Payments

#81

Post by nvahalik »

Auracle wrote: post #80
jjeaff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that there are better ways to transmit data p2p in most devices. Even the smoothest of setups for things like iot devices usually require a Bluetooth connection with a passcode or a connection to a lone wifi signal after which you need to switch back. Using sound would be a perfect way to setup iot speakers or really anything close by. Instead of having to activate Bluetooth pairing and find the sometimes…

I’m kind of bummed nobody has copied how they transfer files on The Expanse. For those that haven’t watched, if someone is standing across from you, you simply swipe it to them. I feel like Apple’s ‘Find my’ tech could work to get positional data and make it possible. You’d need whitelists and the like of course.

AirDrop is what you're looking for.

The issue at play here is that most devices have no concept of locality or relative positioning. They may know (at best) approximate distance between itself and another device based on the type of transmission, signal level, noise levels, etc.

Phones also can't understand intent. How does it know whether it doesn't mean the person sitting behind your friend or your friend?

Re: Ultrasonic Payments

#82

Post by jiveturkey »

andi999 wrote: post #55
jiveturkey wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

modem/phone couplers, anyone?

Phone carriers cut off the frequency spectrum.

i'm just referring to the acoustic isolation from the mechanical coupler. obviously (?) the passband for telephone comms is far short of ultrasonic

Re: Ultrasonic Payments

#83

Post by efallen »

LISNR's been solving this problem for last 10 years. Have several patents in this space dealing with some of the noted challenges around transmitting secure data, increase data throughput, bi-directional support and etc. The LISNR SDK is used to process millions of transactions and growing. Made several announcements, working with and installed in several POS terminals and etc.

Re: Ultrasonic Payments

#84

Post by Auracle »

nvahalik wrote: post #81
Auracle wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m kind of bummed nobody has copied how they transfer files on The Expanse. For those that haven’t watched, if someone is standing across from you, you simply swipe it to them. I feel like Apple’s ‘Find my’ tech could work to get positional data and make it possible. You’d need whitelists and the like of course.

AirDrop is what you're looking for. The issue at play here is that most devices have no concept of locality or relative positioning. They may know (at best) approximate distance between itself and another device based on the type of transmission, signal level, noise levels, etc. Phones also can't understand intent. How does it know whether it doesn't mean the person sitting behind your friend or your friend?

I use AirDrop and it works well, but it's still not seamless.

I think there would still be a quick confirmation button listing who owns what phone you're sending it to, and it could default to people you know in vague situations - but generally whoever is closer.

Re: Ultrasonic Payments

#85

Post by cuteboy19 »

anunay03 wrote: post #28
zinekeller wrote: post #2

Interesting experiment, although it seems that most of Asia has settled on NFC (card emulation or token), QR, and 2D barcodes for offline (at least to customers) payments, which is more practical to deploy using existing infrastructure. I know Tez (aka Google Pay in India which was pushed in other countries) has implemented it, but Indians does Google Pay still have ultrasonic transfers?

Google Pay in India no longer has any of those features. Infact it has been completely reworked to support UPI payments [1]. And it has completely transformed how payments happen. paymets happen directly from bank account to bank account regardlessof what app you're using (Samsung Pay, PhonePe, GPay, your bank's app). You can use QR codes or simple username@bank to make payments. I am not aware of any payment systems…

Tez did for a while support UPI and ultrasonic. It just used sound to transfer the UPI ID

Re: Ultrasonic Payments

#86

Post by cuteboy19 »

est wrote: post #27

This is bad idea. A while ago Alipay had this ultrasonic payment method, I queued for a vending machine, opened Alipay in advance because I never used this "ultrasonic payment" feature before, then just when the guy before me pressed the button, my alipay accidentally payed for him. Luckily he and I wanted the drink of the same price, so he payed for mine instead. Using QR-code or NFC for payment won't mess up like t…

Same thing happened with GPay for India. Ultrasonic is too unreliable at the best of times

Re: Ultrasonic Payments

#87

Post by rusticpenn »

__alexs wrote: post #60
m-s wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you “steal” money from a contactless card or a phone?

1) Gain access to something like a Stripe Terminal ( https://stripe.com/gb/terminal ) You should probably avoid using your real identity here. 2) Type in a charge like $50 3) Discretely wave the device at your targets wallet 4) Repeat steps 2-3 as much as possible in a short amount of time. 5) Hope you can withdraw the funds before anyone notices. I don't think this is a wildly plausible attack and also at least here…

Most new wallets ac as faraday cages.

Re: Ultrasonic Payments

#88

Post by yencabulator »

__alexs wrote: post #60
m-s wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you “steal” money from a contactless card or a phone?

1) Gain access to something like a Stripe Terminal ( https://stripe.com/gb/terminal ) You should probably avoid using your real identity here. 2) Type in a charge like $50 3) Discretely wave the device at your targets wallet 4) Repeat steps 2-3 as much as possible in a short amount of time. 5) Hope you can withdraw the funds before anyone notices. I don't think this is a wildly plausible attack and also at least here…

> 3) Discretely wave the device at your targets wallet

Phone payments generally require the phone to be unlocked.

Also, it's a credit card transaction: the user will complain later, attacker will get into legal trouble, and user will be refunded fully.

Re: Ultrasonic Payments

#89

Post by kevin_nisbet »

hgomersall wrote: post #63
kevin_nisbet wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, although it's not that it goes away, more of a it has different properties. The short time I worked in the IOT space, I was a big proponent of exploring an option like this for bootstrapping the WIFI connection in a device that otherwise had just a button or two. The basic problem is, the wifi password needs to be shared with a device without an interface. The traditional method at the time was the device bo…

It feels to be that this is better solved with NFC. The hardware is in principle cheaper with NFC (certainly, cheaper transducers) and my understanding is nfc is more robust to snoopers - certainly ultrasound is explicitly broadcast.

When I worked on this was a few years ago, so NFC wasn't a viable option at the time. I think even today, some research would need to be done on how widespread support is, we can't guarantee everyone has a brand new phone. but I agree NFC would be worth serious consideration now.

When considering robustness of support, one nice thing about the WIFI approach is in theory you can fall back to just a web browser. So basically any device could be used for provisioning.

And the audio method, would probably support a great set of devices. We didn't actually consider ultrasonic, just an audio codec that was in use at the time and doesn't sound awful.

Re: Ultrasonic Payments

#90

Post by andi999 »

jiveturkey wrote: post #82
andi999 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone carriers cut off the frequency spectrum.

i'm just referring to the acoustic isolation from the mechanical coupler. obviously (?) the passband for telephone comms is far short of ultrasonic

What do you mean by acoustic isolation?
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