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Industry News

RBC, Visa to offer Coca-Cola-shaped prepaid card for Olympic athletes, coaches

By Lauren Lindberg

29/01/2010 - With the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games just weeks away, companies in all industries are ramping up their Olympic-themed promotions, and the merchant services industry is no exception. Visa, the official sponsor of the Olympic Games, has seen most of the attention.

Now, RBC Royal Bank is joining the Olympic bandwagon, offering a Visa prepaid card with payWave technology exclusively for Olympic athletes, coaches and team officials, the bank announced Thursday.

The card, which is shaped "like an iconic Coca-Cola contour bottle," is the first contactless Visa card in Canada not linked to a credit card account, said the bank.

"We know that athletes have enough on their minds during the Games. With the Visa Prepaid Card from RBC, they will have easy and convenient access to beverages whenever they need a drink," said Anne Koski, RBC's head of card payment innovation.

Yet merchants in Vancouver looking for a payment processing boost thanks to Olympic tourism do not need to have contactless POS terminals to benefit from Visa's Olympic promotions - several traditional Visa-branded cards, many of which are prepaid, have been announced in the buildup to the Olympics.

Visa has been the only official sponsor of the Olympic Games since 1986, and is therefore the only card brand accepted at Olympic events. ADNFCR-2514-ID-19585553-ADNFCR

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