Even before setting loose its stars, those other sports sponsorships have helped Visa draw 100 to 120 small businesses to events like its Digital Empowerment Program, which sees Visa team up with nonprofit Human-I-T to bring free laptops and both skills and financial literacy training to individuals and businesses. 

“I promise you that you’ll see programs like that across all of the 16 cities that we have planned for FIFA, as well as around the Super Bowl as well,” Lawrence said. “We do those programs increasingly with small businesses and local communities.”

The beautiful games

Sports tentpoles also help Visa tweak its contactless payment options ahead of the North American World Cup. The company has worked with its NFL team partners, the Olympics in Paris, and, since 2007, with FIFA on men’s and women’s World Cup events.

Visa

At the last men’s World Cup in Qatar, Visa was able to cull data from all World Cup venues and found 70% of all transactions were on Visa cards, 88% of transactions made with those cards were contactless, and overall spending was up 39% from the 2018 World Cup and 300% from 2014.

After roughly five years of contactless payment in the U.S., Visa noted that roughly 65% of its digital payment transactions here are tapped at the point of sale, with NFL facilities helping Visa prepare to welcome a world that’s come to expect easy payment options at sporting events.

“That’s a key part of what’s going to happen in these cities across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico: We’re going to have this influx of cardholders from around the world, and nearly every market has Visa cards and mobile phones that are capable of tapping,” Lawrence said. “If the U.S. had the World Cup in play here five years ago, it would have been a very different experience, but this is not our first rodeo with these big events and, in places like the Olympics, we even have exclusive Visa acceptance, so getting ourselves ready with all of our partners is a muscle that we’ve built over 20-ish years.”