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Rio Olympics: Uber, Visa partner to offer 'Olympic experience'

by Roberta Prescott
written by Roberta Prescott Share
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RIO DE JANEIRO – Uber and Visa have partnered to bring customers of both companies an “Olympic experience.” Beginning Aug. 5, when the games started, customers who requested Uber Visa RioPOOL in select cities could share an interactive ride in special vehicles, and could even share a ride with an athlete from Team Visa.
“That’s a magical experience when you use your Uber app,  explained Chris Curtin, chief brand and innovation marketing officer at Visa. “We wanted to bring Visa into this magic experience and we wanted people to have an Olympic moment if you’re a rider of [an] Uber vehicle in six cities,” The program is available in Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Santiago, San Francisco, Dubai and New York City.
Selected vehicles were transformed to provide a virtual experience of swimming, sprinting, paddling and more. During the ride, passages will be able to add filters and features like animated soccer balls or 3-D faces donning swimming goggles on an in-car tablet.
Uber spokeswoman Leticia Mazon explained the initiative is part of Uber’s strategy to incentive the usage of Uber Pool in Rio de Janeiro. “It makes sense to put more people in the same car.”
Uber has more than 10,000 drivers in Brazil with a goal to achieve 50,000 by October.

Click here for more stories about the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Editor’s note: This story is part of a series focused on the technology deployments that support the Rio Olympics. Travel costs to Rio de Janeiro were provided by Visa.

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Editor, [email protected] Roberta Prescott is responsible for Latin America reporting news and analysis, interviewing key stakeholders. Roberta has worked as an IT and telecommunication journalist since March 2005, when she started as a reporter with InformationWeek Brasil magazine and its website IT Web. In July 2006, Prescott was promoted to be the editor-in-chief, and, beyond the magazine and website, was in charge for all ICT products, such as IT events and CIO awards. In mid-2010, she was promoted to the position of executive editor, with responsibility for all the editorial products and content of IT Mídia. Prescott has worked as a journalist since 1998 and has three journalism prizes. In 2009, she won, along with InformationWeek Brasil team, the press prize 11th Prêmio Imprensa Embratel. In 2008, she won the 7th Unisys Journalism Prize and in 2006 was the editor-in-chief when InformationWeek Brasil won the 20th media award Prêmio Veículos de Comunicação. She graduated in Journalism by the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas, has done specialization in journalism at the Universidad de Navarra (Spain, 2003) and Master in Journalism at IICS – Universidad de Navarra (Brazil, 2010) and MBA – Executive Education at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.

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