THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 28, 1996 TAG: 9606280466
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM SHEAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 46 lines
In the latest application of stored-value cards, NationsBank Corp. said Thursday that fans of the Carolina Panthers football team in Charlotte will be able to pay for food, beverages and souvenirs with a disposable card.
NationsBank also expects to install its FANtastic Plastic payment system at other stadiums and public facilities, Eileen M. Friars, president of NationsBank Card Services, said.
``We think this technology with a chip card has lots of applications,'' she said.
Customer inquiries, accounting and settlement of transactions for the cards will be handled at NationsBank's credit-card processing center in Norfolk, Friars said.
Football fans in Charlotte will be able to use the colorful plastic cards during the Panthers' 1996-1997 season at Ericsson Stadium and at a store selling Panthers' merchandise.
Charlotte-based NationsBank said it will sell the cards through the mail, in its branches and at kiosks in the stadium.
The bank is buying the cards in denominations of $20, $50 and $100 from Schlumberger Smart Cards & Systems, a Chesapeake-based provider of payment-system technology. Unlike the cards that can be reloaded with additional value, the NationsBank cards can be discarded when the face amount has been used.
``This is a reasonably sized project with several tens of thousands of cards,'' said Alain Martin, a Schlumberger project manager in Chesapeake.
NationsBank and two other banking companies - First Union Corp. and Wachovia Corp. - are using Schlumberger's stored-value cards during the Olympic games in Atlanta this summer. The summer Olympics card program will involve more than a million cards, Martin said.
Last year, Schlumberger began providing stored-value cards for use at Jacksonville Jaguars' football games in Jacksonville, Fla.
The cards speed up payments and reduce the security risks involved with cash, Martin said.
The cards generate cash-management fees for banks and allow them to use funds that have gone into the cards but have not yet been disbursed. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
Fantastic Plastic by CNB