In a move backing its plan to showcase mobile payments at the London Summer Olympics and Paralympics Games in 2012, Visa Inc. says it will roll out a Near Field Communication-based mobile phone for payments linked to prepaid accounts from British bank Lloyds TSB.
The partners will issue the phones, manufactured by Olympic sponsor Samsung Electronics, to Visa-sponsored athletes who may use them to make payments at the games. The NFC technology enables users to tap their phone on a card reader to initiate transactions.
Visa, which earlier this month announced its sponsorship of a women’s volleyball tournament as a lead-up to the London Olympics in 2012, had said it plans to promote contactless mobile payments during the games (
“This announcement builds on Visa’s work with Samsung to bring the convenience, flexibility and security of Visa-backed mobile payments to the market,” a Visa spokesperson noted in an e-mail statement. “Visa intends to use the Olympic and Paralympic Games … to showcase mobile payments, which will ultimately increase the technology's profile across the world.”
Visa, which did not disclose how many Olympic athletes would be using the Samsung Olympic mobile phones, said the partners are “working with a variety of industry players to ensure that mobile payments work seamlessly across different types of smartphones and mobile networks.”
Visa says 60,000 locations in London accept contactless payments and that more will be available during the Olympics next year.
The announcement also marks the start of Lloyds TSB’s broader mobile contactless payments program for consumers in the United Kingdom. The partners will make the Samsung Olympic mobile phones available to the general public in a phased approach, Lloyds TSB said in a press release.
The program will start with a large-scale internal pilot using prepaid accounts this month, followed by a commercial launch linked to prepaid accounts by the end of the year, the company said in the release.
Visa and Lloyds TSB did not disclose marketing or advertising plans for promoting the NFC phones.
One analyst that follows the UK market says using the Olympics as a testing ground seems practical because all the elements needed for acceptance and training will be in place to get a good response from consumers.
“This is, to my knowledge, the first moment where we’ll get to find out if mobile payments really work, if people like it and if the technology delivers what they’re promising,” says Megan Bramlette, director at Auriemma Consulting Group.
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