Contactless payments are gaining popularity worldwide. From cards housing Near Field Communication (NFC) technology that enables transactions to take place without physical contact between the payment device and the terminal to ideas that eliminate the need for a physical card altogether.
When Majeed Jega first held an Octopus card while travelling in Asia, he saw the future of payments that he could bring to Nigeria. The Octopus card, a multiple-use contactless card that could be used for payment, public transportation, and, in some cases, take attendance of students in school, sparked an idea.
So, Jega went to work on building Zobe Technologies. Instead of creating another card, he decided to create wearables embedded with an advanced NFC chip that would transform the way we pay and socialise, starting with the Zobe Ring.
At first glance, the Zobe Ring appears to be a minimalist piece of jewellery. But under its polished ceramic and metallic finishes lies a passive NFC chip capable of handling multiple tokenised use cases, including payments, digital identities, and digital keys.
The Zobe Ring works identically to a contactless card. Just like tapping a bank card, users link their existing bank card to the ring via the Zobe mobile app and can use it for payments in place of the card.
“The ring now becomes essentially your card. You simply place the ring on top [of the POS device] and then you get debited from the card that you link to it,” Jega, Founder and CEO of Zobe Technologies, tells Techpoint Africa.
The second use case, Zobe Share, enables users to create digital identities that can be easily shared with others. So, if a user needs to exchange business cards or contact information in a gathering, just tapping the ring on a smartphone transfers their data to the other person’s phone.
As Jega explains, “[If] you meet someone you want to share your business card with, you can just tap the ring on their phone; your ID appears on their phone, and they can save it to their contact list.”
The last use case of the Zobe Ring is as a digital key for electric vehicles. The company is debuting this feature with Tesla cars. The ring allows users to access and drive their vehicles in place of a car key.
“Instead of using the Tesla key, you can get the Zobe Ring and use it to open and drive your Tesla.”
The technology running under the hood
The heart of the Zobe Ring is a passive, battery-free NFC chip. Many contactless cards today utilise NFC technology, which allows transactions to be processed without contact with the machine.
However, integrated into the Zobe Ring is NFC technology that supports multiple “tap and go” interactions. The chip stores tokenised credentials, and when brought near an NFC reader, whether it’s a POS terminal, a smartphone, or a car’s locking system, it transmits the data needed for the requested action.
Jega adds that, to reduce the risk of fraud, the Zobe Ring never holds unencrypted bank or card data. When a user links their bank card in the Zobe mobile app, the card’s number and other sensitive information are replaced with an encrypted digital token. The token is securely loaded into the ring’s chip.
“If someone picks your bank card, they can steal your data; if they pick up your ring, your data is not exposed.”
Moreover, because the ring is passive, it operates without a battery and doesn’t require charging. It’s waterproof and is integrated with the Zobe mobile app, which allows users to connect their card, track expenses, manage all its functions, and disable it if necessary.
Partnerships and approvals
Zobe Technologies doesn’t issue cards or hold customer funds; instead, it embeds its NFC rings into existing payment ecosystems by partnering directly with banks.
Zobe has partnered with leading banks in Nigeria, France, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. With these partnerships, the rings become another endpoint for a user’s existing card.
Jega notes that once a bank completes its embedding process, any customer of that bank can link their card to a Zobe Ring and tap to pay, just as they would with a contactless card.
“Even if you link with us, it’s still a card transaction on the back end; we don’t have any level of intrusion or control over that,” Jega says.
