Credit card firm Visa launches NFT programme to promote creators' economy

Credit card firm Visa on Wednesday launched its NFT creator programme to assist small-scale businesses and artists.

With its creator programme, Visa intends to collaborate with several global digital artists and aims to empower them through blockchain technology and NFT commerce education.

Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto, Visa, said, "NFTs have the potential to become a powerful accelerator for the creator economy. We’ve been studying the NFT ecosystem and its potential impacts on the future of commerce, retail, and social media."

"Through the Visa Creator Programme, we want to help this new breed of small and micro businesses tap into new mediums for digital commerce," he added.

The programme includes various topics, including analysing tradeoffs between underlying blockchain networks, smart contracts, and NFT marketplaces.

The credit card firm took to Twitter to announce its collaboration with its first artist Micah Johnson, former baseball player and Founder of Aku World NFT Community, with whom it had first collaborated in 2021.

His collection includes a ten-part series of black male astronauts dressed in a variety of outfits, ranging from spaghetti and meatball-covered headgear to a basic sleek white helmet.

Micah said, “In the early days of my NFT career, I relied on a community of NFT experts and advocates to ground me in this new world. I’m excited to work with Visa in providing that same type of mentorship to emerging artists setting out on their NFT journey."

Each training cycle will mentor a selected group of entrepreneurs who are interested to learn about the technologies and platforms that drive the NFT marketplace. Besides this programme, the credit card firm is looking at other ways to make NFTs more accessible for users.

In December 2021, Visa had expanded its crypto team and established crypto advisory practice to assist clients and partners considering the field of crypto.