Visa announced the launch of the ‘Visa Creator Program,’ an initiative aimed at helping digital-first artists, musicians, fashion designers, and filmmakers strengthen their small businesses by navigating through the new category of commerce using non-fungible tokens (NFTs), according to a press release.
Approximately 50 million artists, musicians, and creators distribute content as a full- or part-time source of income around the world. The creator economy is one of the fastest-growing categories of small enterprises, with an estimated market size of more than $100 billion. With the Visa Creator Program, the business hopes to assist creators in navigating the technology underpinning NFTs and better understanding the value it may unlock for digital ownership and monetization of creative goods, thereby making it more accessible.
“NFTs have the potential to become a powerful accelerator for the creator economy,”according to Cuy Sheffield, Head of the Crypto, Visa. “We’ve been studying the NFT ecosystem and its potential impacts on the future of commerce, retail and social media. Through the Visa Creator Program, we want to help this new breed of small and micro businesses tap into new mediums for digital commerce.”
Selected innovators will participate in a cohort-based program aimed at improving and deepening their understanding of crypto commerce and traditional payments. The initiative focuses on five major areas where creators can get help:
- Technical and product mentorship: Work with Visa’s team of crypto product and strategy executives to evaluate tradeoffs between underlying blockchain networks, smart contracts, and NFT marketplaces, among other issues.
- Community building: The ability to share ideas and solve problems with a group of artists at different stages of their NFT journey.
- Access to thought leaders: Gain access to cutting-edge researchers and thinkers in the fields of digital commerce, web3, cryptography, and payments.
- Exposure to Visa’s clients and partners: Opportunities to interact with businesses from throughout Visa’s client and partner network.
- Compensation: A one-time stipend to assist creators in entering the next chapter of their careers.
Visa is focused on digitally enabling small and micro businesses through opportunities to access funding, resources, and expertise through community-based initiatives like the Visa Creator Program and She’s Next, as the concept of small businesses continues to expand and evolve, it said in a statement.
Visa Inc., headquartered in Foster City, California, is an American international financial services firm. It supports electronic funds transfers all around the world, with Visa-branded credit cards, debit cards, and prepaid cards being the most frequent methods. Visa is one of the most valuable companies in the world.
