- Visa announced the Creator Program to support creators, while growing their businesses.
- The initiative is a year program and the Visa team will train creators on how to use NFTs to advance their businesses.
Visa has launched a Creator Program that will help creatives use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to develop their businesses. Since it acquired a digital work of art last August, Visa has taken bold strides in the metaverse, revolutionizing the internet into virtual reality. The head of crypto at Visa, Cuy Sheffield, mentioned previously that the digital payment network desires to play a role in NFT commerce. Visa aims to help with the buying and selling of NFTs as in traditional e-Commerce. In October, Visa announced the initiative to enhance business growth for creatives through NFTs. It will run for one year in sections, training creatives such as artists, filmmakers, fashion designers, and others on NFTs. Also, the one-year program will focus on introducing the creatives to essential crypto and e-Commerce areas.
Visa Creator Program
Visa designed the Creator Program in liaison with former MLB player turned NFT artist Micah Johnson. Aku, a young black astronaut NFT avatar, is one of Johnson’s intellectual properties. Johnson admits to having relied on a community of NFT experts and advocates in his NFT career. He is delighted to pass the knowledge on through mentoring new artists in the NFT space. In addition to mentorship, Visa will provide a one-off honorarium to help the trainees pull through the next growth phase. Currently, the number of creatives Visa plans to train on the initiative is unknown. Nevertheless, Visa hopes to maintain a small number for esoteric mentorship and community-building purposes.
Alongside Johnson, Visa’s crypto team will lead the technical and product mentorship topics. They may include evaluating tradeoffs between underlying blockchain networks, smart contracts, and NFT marketplaces. Regarding the training, interested participants are to fill out a questionnaire. The team will interview shortlisted candidates for final consideration. Also, the creatives will have the opportunity to exchange ideologies and have a sense of belonging to a community of like-minded people.
Furthermore, the Visa Creator Program will afford them access to forefront thinkers and researchers working across e-Commerce, web3, crypto, and DeFi. An added advantage is their exposure to Visa’s network of clients and partners.
Visa supporting SMEs through NFTs
Furthermore, the initiative for creatives is part of Visa’s ongoing efforts to help SMEs gain greater access to the digital economy. Visa is determined to upscale SMEs through community-based initiatives. The Visa initiative will avail funding and expert opportunities. Cuy Sheffield said NFTs are capable of becoming powerful accelerators for the creator economy. He added
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.
NFTs can create holding and legitimacy of virtual assets and media, like audio, videos, and images. They can help proprietors generate revenue and grow their businesses. Cuy Sheffield, during an interview with The Block, said:
NFTs can take many forms as creators become more invested in this medium, and we want to be positioned to support and impact creators using NFTs as a bridge to new audiences, products, and services.
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