Smarty Fans

Kerri Strug’s vault and Carl Lewis’ jump? Not bad for Olympic moments.

For bankers, though, the real thrill at the Atlanta Games was seeing fans paying for hot dogs and frozen lemonade with newfangled pieces of plastic called smart cards or cash cards.

The banking industry has been promoting the cards, which store monetary value on a chip and electronically deduct it with each purchase, no matter how small, as an alternative to cash. Three major regional banks and Visa used the Atlanta Olympics as the first large test market for the cards.

Final figures have not been released, but the companies all say the response was strong enough to convince them that such cards have a future.

Visa, for one, plans another major test later this year in New York.

Even the most enthusiastic proponents of smart cards, however, acknowledge that it will take considerable time for them to achieve broad acceptance.

“We’re not disappointed. We’re not jumping up and down, either,” said Nancy Poe, vice president for electronic banking at Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Wachovia Corp. “The numbers were OK.”

Bank executives say credit and automated teller machine cards also took years to find a place in consumers’ wallets.

“There will be a long-term program in terms of people accepting the product, and this was one way to gauge their reaction,” said Scott Scredon, a spokesman for Charlotte, N.C.-based NationsBank Corp., which as an Olympic sponsor had exclusive rights to sell the cards inside competition venues.

The banks, which also included Charlotte-based First Union Corp., went to great lengths to advertise the cards months before the Games began. In addition, about 83,000 spectators at the opening ceremonies found a complimentary $5 card from NationsBank waiting at their seats. Smart card dispensers were at most Olympic venues.

But the message didn’t get through to everyone.

“They would be terrible for me,” said Myla Bennett of Watkinsville, Ga., who attended Olympic basketball and volleyball events but did not use a smart card. “If I had another card to keep up with, I’d go insane. I learned a long time ago the best way for me is to keep cash.”

Merchants equipped with smart card terminals reported modest activity during the Games.

Marty Craig, manager of a fast-food restaurant within walking distance from three Olympic venues in downtown Atlanta, said he took in about $200 a day from customers with smart cards. but he said the cards accounted for only about 1% of sales.

But Jock’s & Jill’s Sports Grill was not accepting the card, and assistant manager Terry Deardon said few patrons asked about them.

“In the two weeks prior to and during Olympic activity, I’ve received a maximum of 10 requests for the cash card,” Deardon said.

Visa said there were 260,000 smart card transactions in Atlanta in July, up from 50,000 in June. The Olympics ran from July 19 to Aug. 4.

Visa spokesman David Melancon said that according to a survey by the credit card company, 70% of Atlanta residents were aware of the cards and 21% said they would use one. The major complaint was that too few stores would take them, he said,

“As problems go, that’s a great one to have,” Melancon said.

Some cashiers did not know how to process the card, and there was an instance in which someone spilled a drink and knocked out a bank of terminals. But “there were no major glitches,” Melancon said.

The New York test is planned for the last three months of this year and will take in a 30-block area of the Upper West Side. But whereas most of the cards distributed in Atlanta were disposable, Visa wants to see how New Yorkers respond to cards that can be reloaded at an ATM.

“While Atlanta was about awareness, New York is going to be about really testing how people live with this in an everyday environment,” Melancon said.