Credit card giant Visa (NYSE: V) has recently launched an NFT program in the hopes of bringing more small businesses to the digital space.
"We've seen rapid growth in the NFT ecosystem over the past year," said Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, to TechCrunch. "We think NFTs represent a new form of e-commerce."
In this NFT program, small business owners in areas like music, fashion, and film will have the opportunity to expand their businesses through the usage of NFTs. The program will also have support that is focused on technical mentorship, the growing and establishment of community, access to thought leaders, and so on. This way of selling goods enables creative individuals as well as entrepreneurs to come up with digital pieces in an entirely new way.
One of the first to partake in the program was Micah Johnson, former Major League Baseball player as well as the artist who created the piece, Aku. Visa made the collaboration known back in October 2021, but they did not reveal that Johnson was part of the collaboration then.
This is not Visa's first time being exposed to the cryptocurrency world. They have been supporting it for the past year or so, and have previously been known for purchasing CryptoPunk NFT back in August 2021. According to Sheffield, this buy will not be Visa's sole NFT purchase. In the future, the company would like to continue to feature itself in the world of NFTs. They have made it clear that they would like to make the process of purchasing NFTs smooth and simple, just as it would be to buy anything else online, said Sheffield.
Besides the NFT program, Visa would also like to discover more ways in which to make NFTs more easily accessible for customers, in terms of how it can be bought or received. They are working toward "a number of initiatives" in terms of this.
"Small businesses and commerce play a really important role in building community, in towns and neighborhoods across the world," said Sheffield. "It's a friendly face you see in a local barber [or] local bakery. And now what we're seeing is creators are using commerce and NFTs to build like-minded communities of people all over the world that are coming together because they share a common set of beliefs, or ideals."