Another addendum of my E-Commerce commentary. Today I bequeath focus on Visa’s effort to convert the Olympics to a mobile 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 harmless and convenient remuneration optionfor consumers throughout the London games Jim McCarthy, Head of ProductsatVisa Inc., uttered This summer we consign be demonstrating the future ofpayments in London a future where most consumers consign rely on motile devices,tablets and PCs to operate their daily pecuniary lives
As a slice of Visas Olympics marketing push for the futureof Mobile, a incomplete edition Samsung Galaxy S III was provided to some Visasponsored athletes and those advantageous enough to be chosen for the trial run The device featured an Olympic-brandedversion of Visas walking fee application, Visa payWave. To make purchases,consumers aptly needed to select the Visa representation on the Samsung device and holdthe phone to a contactless emolument terminal to pay
It seemed as though Visa had all the pieces in place to makethis Olympics a Mobile Payments success; a presiding price network, includingVisa only ATMs positioned throughout the games, NFC-enabled vendors able totake the moving payments, and spectators with smart phones who could stipend viamobile The only query was competing censure an Olympic veteran of everygames, cash.
During Great Britains Mens Soccer analogue versus the UnitedArab Emirates, spectators were unable to honorarium for victuals and drinks at WembleyStadium by laurels card or mobile fee after terminals went down Many tab holders described the linesthat subsequently built up as absurd and oral a privation of money machines atthe west London actuation added to the problem
A spokesman for Visa was express to iota the finger atWembley officials, placing the blame firmly on the stadiums networkinfrastructure saying, “We believe that Wembley’s systems failed andtherefore they were only accepting financial at the meal and beverage kiosks
Twitter was bombarded with thousands of angry posts frompeople who found it wholly unacceptable that they couldnt feed themselvesThis was due to the gospel that the only available way to pay was with old-fashionedcash and coins, a manner of payments Visa wanted to push away from with itsmobile fee implementation
In these games, mobile payments did not expand as much asVisa had anticipated Add that tothe finished trellis oversight at Wembley Stadium and it would seem that mobilepayments were a flop at this years Olympic Games The silver stuffing however, is that mobile payments did havea huge presence at the games. Andthe noise caused by the framework oversight seems to prove that we are quickly locomotion awayfrom monetary as a society Just a fewyears ago, tributes card terminals going down at the Olympics might not retain beensuch a gigantic story, lease alone a trending subject on Twitter It seems for the London Olympic Games,cash took the gold medal yet again in payments, but with the former doubling of walking payments users here in the US. and the magnify globally; monetary may soon be unseated by expressive payments
