Lloyds TSB signs up to Olympic Phone pay-by-wave plan Samsung and Visa have signed up Lloyds TSB to back NFC payments made at the Olympics, on the special-edition Olympic phone, but still need an operator to complete the set. The two Olympic sponsors announced in April that they would be offering an Olympic-branded handset to athletes attending the games, and for sale to fans. …
The very dead Flo-Jo. The not dead yet Ben Johnson. White elephant stadiums in Athens. Corporate rip-offs. Backhanders for corrupt officials. And last but most certainly not least, Chinese government thugs during the 2008 torch parade, manhandling British people, on British streets.
The only thing I'll be buying which is Olympics-related is a 'F**k the Olympics' T-shirt.
Make that two. The other one I will use to dress up a statue of Baron De Coubertin. It's the least we can do for the poor blighter whose ideal has been so systematicallly and disgustingly wrecked.
How much longer is cash going to be allowed? Seems to be that all the ones in charge want to be able to monitor who pays what to whom (and for what), with banks always taking a cut for the transaction. Don't know about you, but I really like the idea of being to pay for stuff without having everything being monitored on the off-chance that you can be marketed to for some other piece of tat.
I only cash for buying pre-pay phones when planning or committing a serious crime.
Most of the time, buying stuff on a credit card, then only paying for it up to 56(?) days later works for me. Pay it off in full, and there's no dastardly interest charges.
Sure, it might mean Mr Credit Card provider knows where I buy my pants, lunch etc. but haven't noticed any great flood of tailored marketing as a result. The benefit of 56 days interest free stuff outweighs the negatives IMHO.
So, you still have to pay for it? Why not pay now and not 56 days later? If you can't afford it till payday, do without.
This is why there's record amounts of debt in this country, people buying tat in the hope/expectation of being able to pay for it in the future. Sadly, they then go and get some other bit of tat and rinse and repeat till the credit card bill is more than they can cope with.
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No mountain of debt here....it gets cleared in full each and every month. Been the same way for years.
That way my cash gets to stay in my account for as long as possible, earning me a whopping, erm, 0.0001p/month interest.
I take it you don't pay your gas/electric bills weeks before payment is due?
Yup I do, well, everything except the credit card and water bill is DDed but when they come I pay them then and there. There's no point in the envelope sitting on the mantlepiece for another 3 weeks when I can pay it now and not have it hanging over my head. Or as happened last year, there was a problem with the money transfer to my credit card so it took 8 days to arrive instead of the usual 2. Good job I paid it 10 days "early".
When the money is sitting in my current account I don't see the point in going into debt, even if I can just pay off the amount in full when the bill comes in
"Pre-payment banking is all the rage these days: one charges up a proximity-payment card (*for a small fee*)"
Why would you want to pay for the convenience of spending your own money?
There's even less excuse here than there is for ATM charges, which UK customers have rejected over and over again. At least with ATMs there's some physical bits of paper that must be handled and securely moved around so you can understand how there might be a cost involved to the providers of "convenience" ATMs.
I'll be sticking with cash from fee-free ATMs and my cashback credit card (they pay me to spend!) thanks very much.
I charge up my wallet with a number of specially printed paper slips and use it to pay for items like coffee, snacks and newspapers. Payment is not instant, but the 10 seconds it takes to complete the transaction is always outweighed by the 5 minutes of queueing that is often needed anyway. No point in speeding up the quickest part of the transaction.
It's pretty easy to get the hang of - each paper slip has a number representing it's value printed on the front, and small round metal tokens are sometimes given in return. Luckily they can be use for purchase too.
It seems to be accepted pretty much everywhere I've tried so far.
You do have to be careful though - if you lose them, you don't get replacements. On the upside they come with built-in advert-blocking and privacy protection.
Even one set up just for the occasion. Would solve the acceptable branding conundrum handily. Also enables all sorts of "extra service" tricks, like ringing up entire teams with a canned message, cheap (for the MVNO) streaming audio delivery, that sort of thing.
Personally, I too would opt for cash as much as I could, and given no choice I won't bother going there. I don't really see why they went with "everything visa" in the first place, except as a way to tie in sponsorship monies at the cost of everyone's privacy. The circus seems intent on holistically blending security goonery and entertainment maybe. It's the future, Shirley?
In a word - queue times.
50,000 people + staff in a stadium which may have 150 food outlets, means a long queue at lunch time. Each NFC transaction will save 30s to a minute each. That's got to help.
Picking up a programme on the way in ? Wave your card/phone and keep walking.
Have a large staff ? Give them ewallets for lunch costs.
I know that a number of football stadiums are already moving to NFC payments. The Olympics will be the same only much bigger.
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