In April, Visa presented its solution for the Banco Central do Brasil’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) competition, the Real Digital LIFT Challenge. The prototype consists of a programmable finance platform for small and medium-sized businesses (particularly farmers), which allows tokenizing sale contracts into NFTs and auctioning them to global investors. Microsoft, Sinqia, and Agrotoken were also part of the submission.
Small businesses are often bound to local markets when looking for financing options. However, these tend to be limited and can sometimes involve unfavorable clauses that may lead to sizable losses, so many entrepreneurs decide to avoid them.
However, this inaccessibility to traditional services can result in lost opportunities. “Small businesses are essential contributors to our local economies,” says Catherine Gu, Global Head of CBDC at Visa, “such as in Brazil where they employ over half the population and contribute to nearly a third of the country’s GDP.”
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