Visa Launches Program for NFT-focused Entrepreneurs

The initiative aims to help content creators “deepen their fluency in crypto commerce and traditional payments”

article-image

Visa headquarters in Foster City, California; Source: Shutterstock

share

key takeaways

  • 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.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Salt Lake City, UT

WED - FRI, OCTOBER 9 - 11, 2024

Permissionless is a conference for founders, application developers, and users. Come meet the next generation of people building and using crypto.

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research Report Templates (6).png

Research

In recent months, a number of highly accretive developments were implemented across the protocol to improve fee capture, expand product functionality, and ultimately drive value accrual to the RUNE token, with more upgrades on the immediate horizon. These developments include hiking the minimum swap fee parameter to increase revenue, adding a Burn System Income Lever to reduce the RUNE supply, the addition of COSM-WASM smart contracting and IBC to enable an application layer, new chain integrations, and more.

article-image

A repayment plan has officially been approved, nearly two years after FTX went bust

article-image

Coinbase filed an interlocutory appeal in its case against the SEC earlier this year

article-image

FTX “never had the crypto” to make in-kind distributions, witness says at FTX’s confirmation hearing

article-image

Lucid Ventures co-founder Meta said they don’t think Solana is “abnormal” in the VC world, where it’s “standard” for many projects to fail

article-image

Plus, Polymarket hits all-time highs in daily trading volumes

article-image

Bitcoin is now in the second half of its bull market, if the previous ones are anything to go by