Olympic Payments: Cash Takes Gold

Another postscript of my E-Commerce commentary. Today I leave axle on Visa’s effort to convert the Olympics to a expressive payments haven

Olympic Payments: Cash Takes Gold

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Today the I’d like totake a look at the role Mobile Payments playedin the 2012 London Olympic Games Visa, the Official Payment Provider of the Olympics, pushed for Mobile Payment Technology as a innoxious and convenient remuneration optionfor consumers throughout the London games Jim McCarthy, Head of ProductsatVisa Inc, oral This summer we leave be demonstrating the future ofpayments in London a future where most consumers leave rely on expressive devices,tablets and PCs to control their daily pecuniary lives

As a share of Visas Olympics marketing push for the futureof Mobile, a incomplete edition Samsung Galaxy S III was provided to some Visasponsored athletes and those fortunate enough to be chosen for the case run. The appliance featured an Olympic-brandedversion of Visas moving price application, Visa payWave. To make purchases,consumers cleverly necessary to select the Visa likeness on the Samsung gadget and holdthe phone to a contactless charge terminal to pay

It seemed as though Visa had all the pieces in recess to makethis Olympics a Mobile Payments success; a commanding cost network, includingVisa only ATMs positioned throughout the games, NFC-enabled vendors able totake the animated payments, and spectators with smart phones who could pay viamobile The only dispute was competing castigate an Olympic veteran of everygames, cash.

During Great Britains Mens Soccer analogue versus the UnitedArab Emirates, spectators were unable to earnings for victuals and drinks at WembleyStadium by laurels card or mobile cost after terminals went down Many tab holders described the linesthat subsequently built up as absurd and vocal a deficiency of money machines atthe west London impetus added to the problem

A spokesman for Visa was quick to speck the finger atWembley officials, placing the blame firmly on the stadiums networkinfrastructure saying, “We understand that Wembley’s systems failed andtherefore they were only accepting budgetary at the nosh and beverage kiosks.

Twitter was bombarded with thousands of angry posts frompeople who found it absolutely unacceptable that they couldnt pasturage themselvesThis was due to the truth that the only available manner to stipend was with old-fashionedcash and coins, a practice of payments Visa wanted to push away from with itsmobile emolument implementation

In these games, expressive payments did not expand as much asVisa had anticipated Add that tothe absolute web omission at Wembley Stadium and it would seem that mobilepayments were a flop at this years Olympic Games The silver filling however, is that mobile payments did havea colossal presence at the games Andthe uproar caused by the framework failing seems to prove that we are rapidly progress awayfrom cash as a society Just a fewyears ago, credit card terminals going down at the Olympics might not own beensuch a gigantic story, hire alone a trending keynote on Twitter It seems for the London Olympic Games,cash took the gold medal yet again in payments, but with the former doubling of ambulatory payments users here in the US. and the enlarge globally; money may soon be unseated by motile payments