Samsung and Visa have announced a partnership to deliver NFC mobile phone payments for the London 2012 Olympics. The partnership will deliver a special Olympic and Paralympic games handset for sponsored athletes to take advantage of Visa’s contactless payment system. The phone will carry a Visa-enabled SIM card to work with the system that has already been deployed in 60,000 locations throughout London.
Samsung, which has already delivered the first Android phone equipped with NFC technology, also expects to make the special Olympic handset available to all customers. Both parties expect the alliance to extend beyond the Olympic games and plan to see the contactless payment system expand globally. Visa is already in the process of rolling out its contactless payment system across a number of countries including the US, Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Brazil, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Malaysia, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Slovakia, Switzerland, Turkey, and the UK.
