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Visa Inc. is leveraging its sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup to showcase several payments technologies, including contactless payments, facial recognition, and digital card issuance.
Visa is deploying 5,300 contactless-enabled payment terminals at official FIFA venues and enabling taxis in Doha, Qatar, capital of the host country, to accept contactless payments by card or smart phone. In addition, Visa will be demonstrating facial-recognition technology to authenticate cardholders, who must be enrolled in the pilot to make use of the feature. The move represents the first time facial-recognition technology, which will be piloted at three Flat White Specialty Coffee branches, has been deployed in Qatar.
Visa will also be piloting a digital prepaid card issuance solution. To receive a digital card, World Cup fans will scan a QR code with their smart phone and receive a digital card that can be downloaded to the digital wallet on their phone. The cards will also feature animated art of La’eeb, the official mascot of the World Cup, as part of an effort to show consumers how their cards can be personalized.
The effort dovetails with Visa’s Masters of Movement presentation, which fuses soccer, art and technology. Billed by Visa as a hybrid experience featuring an interactive pitch at the FIFA Fan Festival in Doha, Visa Masters of Movement enables soccer fans to create digital art and convert it into their own non-fungible token in partnership with Crypto.com. Visa kicked off the program by creating five works of digital art inspired by memorable goals scored in previous World Cup tournaments. The card company then converted those works into a collection of NFTs to benefit the charity Street Child United.
A non-fungible token is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, and that is used to certify authenticity. Ownership is recorded in a blockchain. Visa sees NFTs as a new category of e-commerce that could play an important role in the future of art, retail, social media, entertainment, and sports.
“As FIFA’s longstanding partner, Visa wants to give football fans from around the world the best way to pay in Qatar, while experiencing exciting new innovations such as the fusion of art, football, and technology at Visa’s Masters of Movement venue,” Saeeda Jaffar, a senior vice president and group country manager at Visa, says in a prepared statement. “With thousands of contactless payment terminals, FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 promises to be the most payment-enabled FIFA tournament ever for the more than 1 million fans coming to enjoy the magic of football.”
Visa has been FIFA’s official payment technology partner since 2007.
