Great work Visa, now I hate you
what would have been perfect to do is give 5% cash back on every purchase with a visa made in london during the olympics.  The marketing would have been far more 'word of mouth', the benefits more direct, much happier customers, and it may have prompted people to actually consider getting a visa card if they didn't have one.  Or a random "one person per day using their visa card at the olympics wins $1 million".<p>All of these wouldn't have prevented competing currency, but likely meant almost everyone used a visa anyway, assuming they had one.  But hey, what do I know?  I'm just someone who has a visa card and would have been pissed off and offended at this campaign had I been at the olympics, just like the OP was.  I guess we're not the target market, although I can't really determine who <i>is</i> the target market.