Smartphones are being used for more things every day, and providing a unique digital identity is essential for security. Netherlands-based TicTag’s goal is to be able to allow people to walk out their door, leaving personal stuff behind, and do everything with a smartphone, such as opening doors, attending events, getting loyalty points, or learning more about products.

TicTag is compatible with all smartphones and uses printed foil technology. It won’t work on a smartphone without a person touching it. The device creates five unique digital touchpoints, increasing its security.

Pieter Heersink, TicTag’s founder and CEO, said that TicTag was formed from Kudoos, a startup whose goal was to create a loyalty platform for offline retailers so people didn’t have to bring their paper stamp cards. Its investors include Metropolitan Region of Eindhoven (MRE) and Gelderland Valoriseert, among others.

“Everybody has a smartphone these days, so why not use it for loyalty? We found out that all technologies we could use to get the loyalty points into the smartphone (by letting people scan a QR code, scan an RFID or NFC chip) had certain disadvantages,” Heersink noted. “QR codes were too easy to copy and RFID/NFC was too expensive, and a lot of people didn’t have the functionality on their smartphones.

“We started looking at different ways of input and found out that every touchscreen of every smartphone had multitouch functionality,” Heersink added. “We decided to use that be creating a stamp that had a unique pattern with five conductive touchpoints that would get recognized by a touchscreen via our recognition software that could be integrated into a website or app. We got questions from other companies if it was possible to integrate the basics of this technology into door locks and other use cases. This caused us to fully focus on the development of the technology, sold the loyalty company Kudoos and started TicTag.”

TicTag identifies patterns of five touchpoints that appear on a touchscreen, and its hardware can be used in thousands of use cases in multiple markets.

“In retail, people use it to identify the right shop; in industry, it identifies where employees want to get access and if they are really present on the location,” Heersink said. “In automotive, it can identify which shared car you want to get access to. In all cases, the end-user only needs to have its smartphone. Our hardware that needs to be touched is connected or integrated into the product or object.

One advantage is that TicTag can’t be copied.

“Our technology isn’t easily copied like QR and RFID/NFC,” Heersink pointed out. “TicTag’s technology is based on physical touch instead of only using digital triggers. Our algorithms analyze the touch event and will tell if the touch event itself is unique. Instead of finding something that is already known – a QR code is known, an RFID chip is known – TicTag first looks for something that is not known upfront. Every touch event is built up out of so many details, it is impossible to create two exactly the same touch events.”

For Tic-Tag, the next move is to increase its presence globally.

“We are now looking for a strategic partner that has an ecosystem in the same space as we as a technology provider,” he noted. “We don’t make apps or services. We support services and apps from others that have a need to prove a user’s physical presence. Ideally, we want to work together in a JV or bought by a company that is a technology provider itself, has the expertise and knowledge about the way a touchscreen works and has clients that are software and/or hardware integrators. Our long term focus is on developing the newest versions of the hardware and continuously updating the security software algorithms. Production will be done by others.”

Heersink said that TicTag’s customers report they are seeing a positive reaction to Tic-Tag, both for loyalty programs as well as other projects.

“In retail, we have clients like Countr that integrate us for their loyalty service Buzzoek,” Heersink reported. “They went on Lightspeed, Until and MPlus recently, which will boost sales in a fully automated way. Other clients are Hexagon and TenneT in industry. They want to use our technology to let maintenance workers get access to confidential performance data of their physical assets.

“Our technology is used to give away loyalty points in retail, it is used to let a mechanic show his physical presence at an outdoor facility, and it can give access to confidential digital data that may only be accessed if people show that they are physically present at a location,” Heersink added.