Visa Builds One-Year NFT Program To Support Digital Creators

Payment giant Visa has officially launched its creator program announced last October 2021. Visa aims to help artists improve their business with non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Additionally, the program will run for one year in affiliates and train creators, including artists, musicians, fashion designers, and filmmakers on NFTs.

Visa head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield said,

NFTs can take many forms as creators become more invested in this medium, and we want to be positioned to support and impact creators using NFTs as a bridge to new audiences, products, and services. This is just the beginning. We’re continually developing new products and solutions at Visa for our clients, which can include creators and creator platforms.

Visa first showed an interest in NFTs last August when it purchased a piece of the well-known collection CryptoPunk. During the acquisition, Sheffield said that Visa wants to play a role in NFT commerce, helping consumers purchase NFTs and merchants accept payment for NFTs as easily as they do for traditional goods in e-commerce.

Visa has developed the creator program with retired professional baseball player turned NFT artist Micah Johnson. Johnson created an NFT collection symbolizing a boy in an astronaut helmet named ‘Aku’. This came to Johnson after listening to a conversation where a young boy asked: “Can astronauts be black?”

Through Visa’s creator program, Johnson aims to provide mentorship to emerging artists developing on their own NFT journey. Visa hasn’t yet decided how many inventors it wants to train in this program.

Aside from mentorship, Visa will also grant a one-time stipend to help creators jumpstart their next growth phase, but Sheffield declined to comment on the size of that stipend.