Visa and Samsung to unveil Olympics NFC payments app at Mobile World Congress

Visa and Samsung are to demonstrate an NFC mobile payment service for the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.

Samsung and Visa's Olympics payments app

The two London 2012 sponsors first announced in May 2011 that they would be bringing NFC payments to this year’s games, enabling athletes and visitors to make payments using a special edition Samsung Olympic and Paralympic Games mobile handset. Lloyds TSB will be the banking partner for the project.

The payments application is based on Visa’s payWave technology and will enable users to make purchases, check their transaction history and view their current account balance. The demonstration will take place at MWC on Visa’s stand in Hall 1.

“London 2012 is a unique opportunity to show the future of payments coming to life and leave a lasting legacy post-2012,” says Sandra Alzetta, head of innovation at Visa Europe. “The new mobile payment application is central to this showcase.”

“We are also working with a number of partners to put live mobile payment technology into consumer hands,” Alzetta adds.

“Samsung is extremely thrilled to work with Visa to launch mobile payment services for the London 2012 Olympic Games,” says DJ Lee, executive vice president and head of the sales and marketing team for Samsung’s mobile communications business. “We believe that this showcase will motivate people to experience and adopt easy and safe payment through mobile devices.”

Next: Visit the NFCW Expo to find new suppliers and solutions