Overlay: Supercharging tap to pay.
As I laid out in the previous essay, the clunky and costly card payments you make every day are stunting economic growth. Our mission at Overlay is to radically improve payments, unleashing that growth. We are starting by supercharging the tap payments you make all the time in local places like coffee shops and bars.
Now is the time to supercharge tap to pay
Apple's recent opening up of NFC payments on iPhones has finally allowed us to deliver a new form of tap-to-pay that isn’t limited by the card system. Overlay payments are made with the same familiar tap of your phone on a terminal, but are supercharged:
Digital Receipts: No more paper. Every purchase comes with a detailed digital receipt. It's better for the environment and makes tracking expenses a breeze.
Automatic Loyalty: Forget about stamp cards or clunky apps. With Overlay, loyalty programs are built right in. Buy a coffee, get your stamp. It's that simple.
Streamlined Disputes: Things go wrong sometimes. When they do, our system makes it easy to sort out. No more long phone calls or confusing forms.
This is what tapping to pay with Overlay in a coffeeshop looks like:
Slashing costs, boosting Growth
Card payments are costly. The transaction fees add up, hurting businesses and driving up prices for everyone. Overlay can slash these costs by cutting out the card system and using account-to-account payments where possible, dramatically reducing fees.
But here's the clever bit: Overlay can also work on top of the existing card system too. This means we are able to bring our supercharged tap to pay experience to any market right now, even those without account-to-account or open banking like the US. As account-to-account payments become available to us, we'll switch customers over, cutting costs even further and speeding up settlement.
Security for the modern age
The card system was designed before smartphones existed. Overlay has been designed from scratch around your phone's advanced security features to make payments more secure than ever. This isn't just good for peace of mind - it cuts fraud, lowering costs for everyone.
When you tap to pay with your phone, it authorises a payment by quickly exchanging a series of messages with the terminal through the air via electromagnetic waves. Pretty sci-fi. Our engineering team have created a new way for that electromagnetic messaging to work that’s more advanced than the way traditional tap to pay works - this is what keeps you safer and enables the payments to be much smarter. We’ve called that technology “TapToAuth” - a tap authorisation method designed even for use cases beyond payments eg. unlocking your car, checking into a hotel, digitally signing a contract.
Better disputes and consumer protections with AI
When disputes happen, they're a headache for everyone. Our digital dispute process makes it much easier to manage on both sides. Our AI “referee” steps in to assess and resolve disputes quickly, applying consumer protection rules fairly, escalating to our team only when needed. Overlay’s digital dispute system better protects customers and businesses alike, whilst speeding up the process and reducing costs, making commerce smoother for all.
Why Overlay’s mission matters
Payments are the lifeblood of the economy. By making payments faster, cheaper, and smarter, we're not just improving some tech - we're unlocking economic growth.
Imagine a world where businesses keep more of what they earn. Where customers get better service and lower prices. Where loyalty is automatically rewarded and disputes are resolved in minutes, not weeks.
That's the world Overlay is building. Not just a new payment system - an engine for economic growth.
The moment for change is now. We're not just updating payments - we're rebuilding them from the ground up. And in doing so, we're laying the foundation for a more prosperous and secure future.