In an exciting move to support female entrepreneurs, Visa announced a new program called “She’s Next”. This program is designed to help women who own small businesses grow and strengthen them. All over the world, women-owned businesses are increasing. According to Visa, over 163 million women have opened businesses since 2014 and Visa wants to help them all in unexpected ways.
“As women, we have the power to shape and transform our communities—through our purchasing power and also through the leadership and employment opportunities we offer as business owners. By joining forces with Visa, we will help build awareness of women-owned businesses, provide them with more opportunities and invest in women across the socioeconomic spectrum around the globe.” – Rebecca Minkoff
Training Opportunities for Female Entrepreneurs
“She’s Next” by Visa is offering female entrepreneurs several programs. But, the most exciting is the year-long training opportunities. The opportunities include pop-up events, interactive workshops, and access to experts.
- The pop-ups will take place all over the world so women can network with and learn from other women entrepreneurs.
- The interactive workshops will take place at major events, like the National Retail Federation’s Big Show in New York, Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta, and the FIFA Women’s World Cup in France.
- The experts will come from businesses like Yelp and Square, as well as Visa, and they will share their innovative ideas at the pop-up events and the scheduled events.
- Many of the workshop topics will help women better understand how to use digital marketing to grow their businesses.
The training opportunities were rooted in research. Visa found that women-owned businesses have struggles that businesses owned by men don’t necessarily have. Some of those concerns include:
- 73% of women struggled to get funding to start their businesses.
- 61% of women had to fund their own businesses.
- 43% of women started businesses to get financial independence.
Visa will also begin a marketing campaign called “Money is Changing” that showcases millennial female business owners. The campaign will show how they opened their businesses and challenged stereotypes regarding women and money.
Financial Services that Support Female Entrepreneurs
The “She’s Next” campaign is also supported by the Female Founder Collective (FFC) that was developed in 2018 to support female business owners. The FFC has over 3,000 members who are able to support each other through networking and training opportunities. To further support female entrepreneurs, the Visa Foundation promised $20 million to the Women’s World Banking that promises to help women in several ways including,
- Learning to develop, scale, and test sustainable products that are innovative.
- Expand global financial services to underserved populations.
- Collect and analyze data regarding the impact of financial services for female business owners.
- Share innovative ideas to support micro enterprises around the world.
