Visa, Cherie Blair Foundation to support Nigeria’s Female Entrepreneurs

Visa Incorporated, the global leader in payments, has entered into partnership with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, First Bank Nigeria and the Youth for Technology Foundation (YTF).

The partnership will provide women entrepreneurs in Nigeria with an innovative, 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.

Lack of access to financial services and capital is a significant barrier for women entrepreneurs in the country.

“Empowering women by bridging this gap will translate to the empowerment of the country as a whole as women tend to invest a significant proportion of what they earn back into their families' health and education, making a lasting difference,” Ashaye said.

First Bank will provide the women with training on the mobile banking products 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.

“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 said it remains committed to expanding access to digital payments to emerging economies.

The payment company is constantly creating new partnerships between financial institutions, merchants, governments and consumers to help expand access to appropriate, sustainable and secure financial services and education for everyone, everywhere.

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.

Visa is not a bank and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers.

Visa’s innovations, however, enable its financial institution customers to offer consumers more choices: pay now with debit, ahead of time with prepaid or later with credit products.