Visa Launches Program for NFT-focused Entrepreneurs
- The creator economy has an estimated market size of more than $100 billion
- The company previously revealed its partnership with Micah Johnson, a former professional baseball player and founder of Aku
Visa has launched a program to help content creators grow their businesses through NFTs.
The payment company is looking to select entrepreneurs working in art, music, fashion and film who currently, or plan to, incorporate NFTs (non-fungible tokens) into their business models.
Roughly 50 million artists, musicians and others publish content as a source of income, according to Signal Fire. The creator economy has an estimated market size of more than $100 billion, a report by Influencer Marketing Hub found.
“We’ve been studying the NFT ecosystem and its potential impacts on the future of commerce, retail and social media,” Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, said in a statement. “Through the Visa Creator Program, we want to help this new breed of small and micro businesses tap into new mediums for digital commerce.”
Visa first revealed its idea for the creator program in October. The company at the time noted its partnership with Micah Johnson, a former professional baseball player who created entertainment and media company Aku.
“In the early days of my NFT career, I relied on a community of NFT experts and advocates to ground me in the new world,” Johnson said in a statement. “I’m excited to work with Visa in providing that same type of mentorship to emerging artists setting out on their NFT journey.”
The program aims to help selected creators “deepen their fluency in crypto commerce and traditional payments,” according to the company.
The cohort of creators will be “a small enough size to facilitate community-building and support technical mentorship,” a Visa spokesperson told Blockworks. Those with “inspirational mission-based stories” will be selected, the representative added.
A stipend, which Visa declined to specify, will also be offered to creators in the program.
Visa’s team of crypto product and strategy leaders will cover topics such as evaluating trade-offs between underlying blockchain networks, smart contracts and NFT marketplaces.
The company will also provide opportunities for creators to engage with Visa’s clients and partners.
The program launch comes after Visa bought a CryptoPunk for $150,000 in ethereum in August. Sheffield noted at the time that the company purchased it to get “a first-hand understanding of the infrastructure requirements for a global brand to purchase, store and leverage an NFT.”
Visa also recently created a crypto advisory practice as a way to help its clients and partners evaluate and pursue potential opportunities in the space.
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