Last Friday’s opening event for the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, garnered $5.2 million in total spending on Visa credit, debit and prepaid cards, a 46% increase from $3.57 million the same day a year earlier, event sponsor Visa Inc. says.
By comparison, total Visa card spending for the opening event of the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, that Visa also sponsored grew by 11% from the same day the previous year, says Visa, which did not provide specific spending data.
U.S. Visa cardholders were the biggest spenders the day of the opening event last week, accounting for $2.3 million of the total. Among the top 10 countries whose cardholders’ spending Visa ranked, cardholders from China were second with $395,000, followed by those from the United Kingdom at $290,000, from South Korea at $220,000, from Australia at $213,000, from Hong Kong at $209,000, from Russian Federation at $180,000, from Japan at $177,000, from Brazil at $105,000 and from Germany at $98,000.
Visa, an Olympic Games sponsor for 24 years, is the only card accepted at ATMs and at more than 800 point-of-sale terminals located throughout Games-related venues.
Coca-Cola Bottling Co., another Olympics sponsor, also is deploying some 270 vending machines throughout the Olympic Village equipped with Visa’s payWave contactless payment technology. Royal Bank of Canada is the local bank sponsor of the Winter Olympics (
