Visa Impact is an ongoing series of short films that capture Visa’s work in driving social change, innovation, and economic growth across regions, one small step at a time. Future episodes will traverse more corners of the world, spotlighting stories that reflect Visa’s commitment to expanding what is possible across the payment ecosystem, shaping the future of commerce for everyone, everywhere.
This is the third part of the series. The first part explored how Mariem Faghraoui is helping promote economic growth for local artisans in Morocco through her online marketplace Neolli. You can read about it here. The second part highlighted how Thrive Agric, a regional and global winner of the Visa Everywhere Initiative, is digitally enabling smallholder farmers across Africa. You can follow co-founder Ayo Arikawe’s journey here.
The vibrant Dordoi Bazaar, often considered the largest market in Central Asia, is located on the outskirts of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The bustling market boasts an impressive annual turnover of $3 billion but faces a substantial challenge: in 2023, only 10 percent of its 60,000 merchants had a bank account.
At Dordoi Bazaar and other markets, the prevalence of cash-only transactions can disrupt vital sales opportunities for merchants, particularly as customers, many of whom are tourists, increasingly seek more frictionless experiences.
One such merchant is Zarina, who co-founded a Korean cosmetics store in 2009 alongside her husband, importing products directly from South Korea. However, a major roadblock in Zarina’s growth journey stemmed from inadequate access to the digital economy – and a lack of infrastructure to offer payment options.
Enabling cashless acceptance for greater convenience
In 2022, Visa partnered with the Dordoi Association and New Market Technologies to assist small merchants such as Zarina in digitizing, while also expanding the bazaar’s cashless acceptance infrastructure. Through this collaboration, Visa helped to install payment terminals, introduce tap-to-phone technology, and launch Visa business cards to bring merchants closer to their customers.
This presented a new world of possibilities, offering convenience to tourists and shoppers while helping merchants sidestep missed opportunities and abandoned carts.
In today’s world, consumers are progressively driven by seamless shopping experiences and convenient digital payment options.
According to Visa’s Global Back to Business Study, 59 percent of consumers in 2023 reported that they did not make a purchase because digital payments weren’t available. In addition, the top contactless or digital payment options that consumers expected at brick-and-mortar stores were contactless cards (57 percent), mobile payment apps (49 percent) and mobile wallets (49 percent).
Supporting small businesses to uplift the broader economy
For small businesses like Zarina’s, these insights are particularly important. Through the adoption of digital capabilities and implementation of cashless infrastructure, SMBs can reap the benefits of a growing digital economy and better cater to their customers’ wants and needs. In turn, SMBs can support and uplift the economies within which they operate.
Reflecting its goal of enabling individuals and merchants to take a step forward to where they want to be, Visa helps facilitate SMB growth and success.
Recently, Visa announced that it has enabled nearly 67 million small businesses worldwide, exceeding its three-year goal of digitally enabling 50 million SMBs globally by June 2023.
As Visa continues its important work of innovating, collaborating and co-creating solutions that seek to respond to today and tomorrow’s challenges and, crucially, its opportunities, this serves as a solid foundation upon which further progress can be built.
Through its strategic partnerships, programs and initiatives, Visa seeks to break barriers, enhance access, and drive prosperity, spurring the future of commerce and contributing to a more inclusive and connected financial ecosystem – where every individual and merchant is empowered to take a series of small steps – moving them forward towards realizing their full potential.
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