Payments giant Visa is launching a non-fungible token (NFT) support program in partnership with Major League Baseball player turned NFT artist Micah Johnson. With this program, the idea is to support artists who want to sell NFTs of their artwork.

Johnson is the creator of animated astronaut Aku which was released on Nifty Gateway in February this year and sold for more than $2 million.

“Working together [with Visa], we want to arm creators with the resources they need to stay at the forefront of this revolution,” Johnson said in a statement.

When I retired from baseball in 2018, I was terrified. I had no place to sell my work and no work experience.

The #NFT community opened their arms and showed me what was possible and that love is something that will always stick with me. https://t.co/yhbuCCoqLP

— Micah Johnson (@Micah_Johnson3) October 13, 2021

There is an application process to participate in the program for which Visa will select a small group of creators and help them learn about blockchain and the crypto industry.

“We believe that we are at the beginning of a digital renaissance in the world of art and content creation,” Visa’s Head of Crypto Cuy Sheffield wrote on Twitter.

“New technologies emerging in the crypto ecosystem, like NFTs, have the potential to lower the barrier to entry for digital creators across the world to build their own small businesses.”

Another payment company Stripe has also jumped into the crypto scene. As we reported two weeks back, Stripe has been hiring an engineer for its brand new “Crypto” team, and this week, the company made the official announcement.

2/ That time has come! @Stripe is starting a crypto team today, and I couldn't be more excited that @gponcin is leading it. We're hiring for Web3 engineers and designers—I hope you'll join us: https://t.co/mT7QWbWgoL.https://t.co/vQenS0oMgx

— edwin (@edwinwee) October 12, 2021

The crypto engineering team that Stripe has begun assembling will be run by the company’s former head of engineering for banking and financial products, Guillaume Poncin.

Those engineers “will design and build the core components that we need to support crypto use cases,” the job posts said. “Crypto is a brand new team at Stripe.”

Stripe first supported Bitcoin in 2014, only to end it four years later. But the $95 billion company says it never left and continues to watch the space develop, and this time, it will remain tech-neutral and won’t be picking any favorites.

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