The payment company is looking for entrepreneurs in the arts, music, fashion, and film that are using or plan to employ non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in their business models.
Approximately 50 million artists, musicians, and others earn a living by publishing their work. The creative economy has a market worth more than $100 billion, according to a report conducted by Influencer Marketing Hub.
“We’ve been investigating the NFT ecosystem and its possible consequences on the future of commerce, retail, and social media,” Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s director of crypto, said in a statement. “Through the Visa Creator Program, we want to empower this new breed of small and micro businesses to tap into new channels for digital commerce.”
Visa first revealed the notion of its creator program in October. At the time, Micah Johnson, a former professional baseball player who founded the entertainment and media firm Aku, was a partner.
“In the early days of my NFT career, I depended on a network of NFT professionals and activists to help me get a foothold in the new world,” Johnson said in a statement. “I’m pleased to collaborate with Visa to provide the same sort of mentoring to budding artists embarking on their NFT journey.”
According to the company, the project aims to help selected entrepreneurs “deepen their fluency in crypto commerce and traditional payments.”
According to a Visa representative, the group of artists would be “small enough to stimulate community-building and give technical assistance.” Those with “inspiring mission-based stories” would be picked, according to the source.
The initiative’s creators would also get a stipend, which Visa did not specify.
Among the topics discussed by Visa’s team of crypto product and strategy specialists will be trade-offs between underlying blockchain networks, smart contracts, and NFT markets.
The business will also allow designers to communicate with Visa’s customers and partners.
In August, Visa paid $150,000 in ethereum for a CryptoPunk, triggering the program’s launch. Sheffield said at the time that the firm purchased it to get “first-hand understanding of the infrastructure necessary for a large brand to acquire, store, and exploit an NFT.”
Visa has just launched a crypto advisory service to help its customers and clients in identifying and developing potential crypto opportunities.
