Visa has partnered with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, First Bank Nigeria and the Youth for Technology Foundation (YTF) to empower women enterprenuers through innovation in mobile technology solution to promote financial inclusion in the country.
“This initiative is part of our strategy to help increase the financial awareness of more women in our society” said Ade Ashaye, general manager for Visa in West Africa. “Through this collaboration, a total of 2,500 women entrepreneurs will become agents in the retail network of First Bank Nigeria. These agents in turn will bring branchless banking and mobile financial services to at least 75,000 Nigerians living in rural and underserved communities.”
The general manager added that the biggest barrier in women’s development is lack of access to financial services as well as deficient capital.
In this partnership, First bank will take the responsibility of training women on the mobile banking while Youth for Technology Foundation (YTF) will provide capacity-building entrepreneurship training to help them gain comprehensive knowledge and information on subjects that are core to their development as entrepreneurs. Visa will remain committed to expand access to digital payments to emerging markets
“We believe access to financial services is essential for progress. Financial inclusion is a bridge that allows formerly isolated members of an economic system to join in and become contributing participants. Improving access to financial services and electronic payments is a critical building block to help more people improve their lives and lift themselves out of poverty.” Ashaye added.
Visa is a global digital payments network that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable electronic payments.
It operates one of the world’s most advanced processing networks – VisaNet – that is capable of handling more than 47,000 transaction messages a second, with fraud protection for consumers and assured payment for merchants.
