Samsung and Visa, the two Olympic sponsors, will combine their sponsorship assets and technology to ensure that the Olympic and Paralympic Games mobile handset, which enables mobile payments, equipped with Near Field Communications (NFC) and Visa’s contactless payment technology, will be available to general public.
To make the payments, customers can select the Visa mobile contactless application in the phone, select pay and hold it in front of a contactless reader at the point of purchase.
A Visa-enabled SIM card will be required for use with the device in order to make purchases at retailers who have the contactless payment system.
Samsung and Visa will work together to provide the contactless enabled Olympics handset to Visa and Samsung sponsored athletes as part of this initiative.
Both the sponsors also plan to make the handset available for consumers to purchase through mobile network operators and other distributors.
Samsung Electronics Europe president and CEO Seokpil Kim said that this mobile payment device will be available in the UK initially, and Samsung plan to expand the service to other countries in Europe and around the world where contactless payment facilities are available in the near future.
