As the sporting world comes down from the high of the
Olympics Games, Sara Perria asks whether the ‘proud to accept only
Visa’ campaign, and the focus on contactless payments, earned the
network a place on the podium
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The words “Sustainability” and “legacy” were
two of the most often-used by the organisers of the 2012 London
Olympics. The Organising Committee is confident that the city will
be reaping the benefits of hosting the event for years to come. But
will Visa, the event’s major, feel the same?
The decision was made to position itself as
the only electronic form of payments allowed in Olympic venues,
with exclusive rights on ticket sales and ATMs. And the Olympics’
retail infrastructure left the consumer in no doubt that was “proud
to accept only Visa”.
However, the network’s aim was more ambitious
than simply raising brand awareness.
Prior to the event, Visa distributed NFC-ready
Samsung mobile phones to a number of lucky sport fans, and
billboards across the city espoused the benefits of contactless
payments as a way of getting through the check-out faster than
Usain Bolt.
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By GlobalDataInstalling more than 3000 contactless
terminals across the venues, the company also stressed its
intention to use the event as a testing ground. “London 2012 is a
unique opportunity to show the future of payments coming to life,”
said Sandra Alzetta, Head of Innovation at Visa Europe.
Misjudged campaign?
The public awareness campaign attracted
criticism from the advertising industry. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s
Today programme, the head of global ad agency Havas, David
Jones, singled Visa out for criticism, saying the privileges
expected from such an investment should only go so far.
“To actually go to the extent of only allowing
Visa payments to be made at the Olympic stadiums and sites, and to
remove all the other cash machines that are non-Visa actually
starts to really annoy people,” Jones says.
“And there are lots of signs around the
Olympic Park saying ‘we are proud to only accept Visa’. This is so
out of touch with what is in people’s heads.
In Jones’ view the campaign will probably end
up damaging Visa image, rather than enhancing the brand.
“There is a hell of a lot of good going on in
and around the Olympic movement, but if they are not careful they
are actually going to start causing problems for themselves,
because the people who do worst out of the sponsorship will be the
actual sponsors,” he says.
Jones compared Visa’s campaign to that of
British Airways, who actively encouraged people not to use their
services during the Olympics.
“”They get the gold medal for understanding
their target group.”
A missed opportunity?
With the medals now safely tucked away in the
athletes’ sock drawers, analysts are beginning to assess the
results of Visa’s efforts. Celent senior analyst Gareth Lodge is
convinced Visa could have achieved more with such a global stage at
his disposal.
“I don’t know what results they were
expecting. But I do feel this has possibly been a missed
opportunity, if the purpose was to present electronic and
contactless payments and persuade people to swap to them,” Lodge
says.
“I think they could have done more.” More
public demonstrations, for instance.
“There was nobody from Visa doing what other
sponsors were doing, from what I saw. Samsung had all sorts of
activities going on. They talked about the phone given to the
athletes with the contactless built into it, but no-one from Visa
was doing the same thing,” he says.
“There was no big sign on the till saying ‘use
contactless, how wonderful it is’ or a Visa representative standing
by the till saying ‘have you tried contactless payment?’”.
The success of contactless payments comes down
to public awareness. In London, where issuers and acquirers alike
have made the technology ubiquitous in consumers’ wallets and at
the point of sale, there was no barrier other than the fact that
people do not know it is there.
Of course, says Lodge, that awareness-raising
“would need to be an industry movement rather than just one
provider. But Visa sponsored the Olympics rather than the card
industry so of course they wanted to do something on their
own”.
Claiming the podium
It is quite possible that the network did not
want to promote the technology to the public so much as test it in
a proxy closed-loop environment. But Visa is clear that this was
not its intention.
“We installed contactless terminals throughout
the venues at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to
demonstrate the value and potential of contactless payments to our
partners and members from around the world,” Visa Europe head of
contactless Mark Austin says.
The company is also happy with the statistics
it offers now the event is over: “With contactless accounting for
one in six sub-£20 transactions across Olympic venues, we are
pleased with consumers’ response to the technology and have gained
many useful insights that will help make contactless a commonplace
payment method,” Austin adds.
As for the lack of promotion Visa insists it
worked with Samsung to demonstrate live mobile payments. According
to the company, this has increased awareness and enthusiasm for
mobile payments among retailers and financial institutions.
“The response has been extremely positive and
our priority now is on turning that enthusiasm into commercial
mobile payment deployments across Europe,” Visa explains.
The company also says it strongly believes in
the value of mobile and contactless payments, expecting “half of
all transactions over our network to be through a mobile device by
2020”.
Not an easy task, it admits, “and we will
continue to work with all of our partners in the new world of
payments to educate and encourage consumers on the ease, security
and value of contactless payments, whether they’re made through a
card or a phone,” Visa concludes.
More to come
Visa has bought sponsorship rights for Winter
and Summer Olympics until 2020, meaning there are five other
chances to trial and promote contactless payments.
Celent’s Lodge says that “this type of
environment is a closed-loop, where they can control everything
that happens within the boundaries of the venue: there are not any
events in which you can control all aspects for millions of
people”.
Waiting to see what the future will bring,
Lodge stresses a final point on the “Proud to only accept Visa”
campaign: “Customers don’t care about anyone’s pride when buying
something – the industry has to remember it’s about why they are
making a transaction, not our feelings.
“Sadly, cash won gold in this case, while I
think other forms of payments simply failed to qualify for the
finals.”
But that said, Visa’s Austin is clear – the
game is by no means over: “The journey is a marathon, not a
sprint”.
