Visa Launches NFT Creator Program for Small Businesses
When we think about small businesses, the visuals that come to mind can range from a hip coffee shop, or a brick 'n mortar mom-and-pop shop selling artisan bread and cakes. Either way, small business are the back bone of a solid economic structure.
Visa believes that with all the business landscape changes in play, it can help small business evolve and usher them into the web 3.0 era of Non Fungible Tokens (NFT), crypto and so on. Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa believes that NFT's represent a new form of e-commerce and has momentum behind it.
Based on this premise, Visa has created a one-year NFT creation immersion program, where they will onboard a cohort of creators and provide them with tools to build their businesses, leveraging NFT's. Beyond the evolution of e-commerce, the driver behind this Visa initiative is to eliminate the logistical overhead associated with physical goods.
Based on the vision shared by Visa CEO, Alfred Kelly in 2021 - Crypto space is not new to Visa. In one of the earning calls with Analysts, Kelly said that Visa will treat crypto currencies as two segments: Fiat Based and Traditional, such as Ethereum or Bitcoin. He also stated that:
"In this space, we see ways that we can add differentiated value to the ecosystem. And we believe that we are uniquely positioned to help make cryptocurrencies more safe, useful, and applicable for payments through our global presence, our partnership approach, and our trusted brand,".
Utilizing the current trend of NFT's, Visa is simply expanding on its own business strategy, since, NFT's are primarily bought and sold leveraging crypto currencies. Visa is also expanding its strategic portfolio through acquisitions, where in 2021 it bought CryptoPunk. There are other un-disclosed initiatives beyond the NFT Creator program that Visa is working on. The intent is to create an ecosystem of products and services, where consumers can easily transact using Visa.
In this vein, “We’re incredibly excited about NFTs,” Sheffield has said and continues, “We want every [NFT] marketplace to be able to accept Visa cards because we think NFT’s will exist across many different networks.”
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