Mastercard has committed an investment of Rs 250 crore (USD 33 million) to help reboot Indian small and medium businesses (SMEs) and enable business recovery. As part of this commitment, Mastercard will roll out multiple initiatives.
These include help small businesses by growing digital payments awareness and providing low-cost acceptance solutions, online and offline that are simple, safe and secure; drive inclusive growth by enabling small merchants and kirana stores with access to credit, knowledge and tools that will drive operational efficiencies; and empower women entrepreneurs by increasing their business acumen.
This is an extension of Mastercard’s commitment to financial inclusion which pledges to bring one billion people and 50 million micro and small businesses into the digital economy by 2025.
In April 2020, the company also pledged USD 250 million to support small businesses globally.
These new initiatives are built on Mastercard’s partnership with the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) and will increase digital payments awareness and support merchant on-boarding for digital commerce.
The company had launched the multi-city Team Cashless India campaign with a goal to equip one crore merchants in India with digital payments acceptance capabilities in 2019.
In June 2020, Mastercard in partnership with Axis Bank and Worldline launched a digital point-of-sale (POS) solution with tap-on-phone functionality that allows merchants to accept payments simply using their smartphones.
The solution enables face-to-face payments with Bharat QR and NFC payments, as well as remote payments for home deliveries via link-based payments. This solution enables fast and easy on-boarding of merchants and acceptance of digital payments by merchants and kirana stores.
To further boost confidence in digital commerce and ensure safety and security of digital transactions, Mastercard has launched easy-to-use AI based applications that help preempt and prevent cyberattacks.
To address the working capital gap for small businesses, the company is working with large companies along with banks to introduce credit solutions and schemes that enable easy and fast availability of credit, ensure supply chain continuity, and strengthen entrepreneurs’ financial resilience.
The company has partnered and provided data and AI based applications for emerging markets that catalyze merchant access to supply chain credit with key suppliers using SME purchase history.
The company is also working with various institutions to bring more women into fintech, support women business owners and cultivate more women entrepreneurship.
Under the programme, training and basic technology education is imparted to women kirana shopkeepers, using BuddhiMoney, empowering them with ease of doing business, increased access to credit and market access.
