Visa, a leader in digital payments and financial services, has teamed up with Agrotoken, Microsoft, and Sinqia to develop a finance platform for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Brazil.
The project is part of the LIFT Challenge, a contest designed to explore innovative blockchain-based use cases for The Real Digital, Brazil’s central bank-issued digital currency.
The platform’s goal is to help farmers get funding more easily by connecting them with investors. Through the platform, farmers can create a tokenized contract and auction it to people all over the world using the Ethereum blockchain.
The platform also incorporates a sealed-bid auction mechanism on the blockchain through smart contracts, enabling investors to take part in the funding process and facilitating competitive price discovery.
The Digital Real is set to launch in 2024, and the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB) intends to integrate it with PIX, the instant payment system that relies on BCB-provided technology. This initiative strives to lower the expenses of banking operations, boost the financial inclusion of Brazilians in the burgeoning financial market, and encourage new business ventures in the financial services industry.
Visa has been collaborating with central banks and other payment ecosystem participants globally to identify promising opportunities for CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies). The launch of this platform marks another stride Visa has made towards the Web3 space, building on its efforts since 2021 when it first introduced crypto consulting services to assist banks and merchants in entering the cryptocurrency space.
In October 2022, Visa partnered with ShopNEXT to launch a Web3 loyalty platform that let Visa cardholders shop conveniently while earning token rewards. Furthermore, Visa unveiled the Visa Creator Program in March 2022, which was designed to assist creators in exploring the world of NFTs.
