British Olympians Spotted Putting Wearable Payment Systems to Work in Rio

In a bid to push mobile payment systems powered by wearable devices, Barclaycard and Visa got together with the entire British contingent of Olympics athletes—all 366 of them—and supplied them with a contactless bracelet that could be used to make mobile payments at an array of locations in the region.

The bracelets in question were said to work at nearly 4,000 total terminals scattered throughout the various Olympics ventures, and the bracelet even had some specific Team Great Britain branding to help promote in both directions.

The device boasts a near-field communications (NFC) antenna, along with the Barclaycard bPay microchip, which allows for a complete mobile payment solution.

Visa’s managing director for the United Kingdom and Ireland, Kevin Jenkins, commented “Wearable payments make life so much easier — fewer things to carry, fewer things to keep track of — which is why Visa is innovating in this area with our partners.

We are proud to work with Barclaycard in support of Team GB and hope that the band makes their life just that little bit easier with tap at the checkout.”

While it’s not exactly a great idea to be using a mobile payment system in Rio right now—we’ve seen the level of cyberattack and online fraud going on down that way these days—it’s potentially a real coup for Barclaycard and Visa.

If it can demonstrate success in a deeply contested area of operations like Rio right now, then it can demonstrate success just about anywhere.

Plus, there’s the “Team Great Britain” tie-in that’s going to be hard to pass up as a marketing tool.

The combined effort of the patriotic option coupled together with a trial-by-fire setup should go over in a big way, especially in the days following Brexit when nationalist sentiment is at its highest.

That’s good news for Barclaycard and Visa, and if nothing goes particularly wrong—no Olympian ends up on the bad side of identity theft following the event—it could be just the thing the companies need to pull off a gold medal performance of their own.

Granted, this may not go off quite how the duo would expect, but if it does work, it could pay off in a very big way for Barclaycard and Visa.