Digital payments firm Visa has launched a new campaign dubbed “Where You Shop Matters” to encourage consumers to support local businesses while helping SMEs to go digital following the onset of Covid-19.
The initiative is part of Visa’s small business strategy to support 10 million small and micro businesses in the Asia Pacific, and a global commitment from the Visa Foundation of $210 million to provide Covid-19 emergency relief for the small business sector.
As part of the initiative, Visa has partnered with Shopee to help support local small businesses who are selling on e-commerce platform. The tech firms will be creating campaigns to enable Visa cardholders to avail discounts when they shop at local merchants in Shopee.
“We introduced Where You Shop Matters to support our small businesses in the Philippines. The impact of Covid-19 for these businesses along with shifting consumer behaviors to e-commerce reinforced the need for Visa to launch Where You Shop Matters. Furthermore, the partnership with Shopee will help us support thousands of local businesses in the Philippines. We are confident that Filipinos will help support the local economy, especially since our study showed that 95 percent of Filipino consumers will purchase from local retailers to support small business recovery,” said Dan Wolbert, Visa country manager for the Philippines and Guam.
The Visa study also showed that 77 percent of Filipino consumers believe it is important for local retailers to have an online presence.
To encourage SMEs to go digital, Visa will be providing them with a Visa eCommerce Starter Kit to help them start, manage, and grow their online storefronts.
Visa is partnering with BigCommerce to provide onboarding support and special discount rates for SMEs to sign up and start selling online. SMEs can also benefit from a variety of offers, including Office 365 business packages and cashback on Google Ads to help them get their online business up and running. For SMEs with physical stores, they can order free Visa POS signage to build trust with consumers.
“The pandemic has accelerated several years’ worth of change into the span of a few months, and this rapid acceleration of the shift to digital payments also means that businesses need to go through a digital transformation and adapt to changing consumers’ behaviors to do well,” added Dan.
