July 3, 1996. Copyright, 1996, Graphic News. All rights reserved

VISA AT ATLANTA
By Laura Spinney, Science Editor

LONDON, July 3, Graphic News- The 1996 Olympics in Atlanta could be the first cash-free Games, if an experiment being staged by Visa is a success.

Visa International, a major sponsor of the Olympics since 1986, claims that every purchase made at this yearÕs Games Ð from chocolate bars to hotel bills Ð could be paid for without cash using either credit, charge or debit cards, or the experimental Visa Cash.

Visa Cash is a stored value card, a form of smart card whose monetary value is held as electronic information in a microchip. It has been designed to replace cash in transactions worth less than $10, so it fills the gap below which credit and debit cards are not viable. In the metropolitan Atlanta area, around 1,500 retailers with more than 4,000 electronic terminals will be able to accept Visa Cash.

Visa hopes that over 1.5 million cards will have been issued by the end of the Games, claiming that the new card makes small purchases quicker and easier. But according to Gwen Moss, a spokeswoman for Mondex International, which is currently running a trial of its own electronic cash card in San Francisco, Visa Cash is less secure than Mondex. Neither can it offer the anonymity of a cash transaction because the bank that issues the Visa Cash card keeps account of the purchases made with it. ÔThe main technical difference is that all security, physical and logical, is on the [Mondex] chip,Õ says Moss. ÔWith Visa Cash, part of its security is on the terminal.Õ

Sources: Visa International, Mondex International