During the Olympic Games in London, the German team will have a contactless payment card that is accepted in thousands of shops and taxis in the English capital.
In cooperation with PAYBACK, official partner to the German Olympic team for London 2012, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg will be providing the PAYBACK Top-Class Sports Visa card to a select group of athletes. Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) will produce the exclusive dual-interface cards that sport a stylish black and gold design and support contactless and contact payment.
Landesbank Baden-Württemberg is launching one of the first Visa payWave credit card in Germany with its PAYBACK Olympic Games card. The card will allow the athletes to use contactless payment wherever the Visa standard for contactless payment - Visa payWave - is accepted. The Olympic athletes will also be able to use the cards just like conventional Visa cards for contact payment. Landesbank Baden-Württemberg is also planning to extend contactless functionality to other card programs.
There are thousands of contactless payment terminals in London, with another 3,000 planned for the Olympic Games alone. 8,000 Transport for London buses and 2,500 taxis will also be equipped with terminals to accept contactless payment. To ensure the whole process runs quickly and smoothly, the Olympic Games participants will not be required to enter a PIN or sign a payment slip for amounts under €25. A signature will only be required for amounts above this limit. The German athletes will also automatically collect PAYBACK points when using the card to pay.
The German athletes will be able to apply for the card from the end of June at the official outfitting presentation in Mainz. The German Olympic officials and most participants that attended previous Olympic Games already have a PAYBACK credit card for contact payment and will automatically receive the new card for the London Olympics.
"London ranks as one of the top European cities as far as contactless payment is concerned. The German athletes will therefore be ideally equipped with the new Olympic Games card. And once they get back home they will be among the trendsetters for contactless payment in Germany - sending a positive message of which we are particularly proud", says Michael Kuemmerle, member of the Management Board and head of the Mobile Security business unit at Giesecke & Devrient.