SME Foundation, Visa join forces to support 7.8m CMSME

SME Foundation and Visa signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to support cottage, micro, and small and medium-sized entrepreneurs (CMSMEs) in Bangladesh, reports BSS.
The three-year partnership was announced at the SME Foundation's head office on Tuesday, said a press release.
With this partnership, Visa and SME Foundation aim to provide support to small and medium-sized businesses for capabilities development, using Visa's expert content on financial and business skills.
This includes regional entrepreneurship development training, exchanging global best practices and tools to enhance their skill sets, capabilities for e-commerce and wider markets, secure online payment systems, and facilitating access to finance by introducing visa commercial/SME products and solutions.
Additionally, SME Foundation and Visa will collaborate to design and implement pilot programmes for government incentives disbursements, enhancing resource personnel capacity, and strengthening coordination efforts.
Visa will also provide payments intelligence for policy making through tools like the Visa Government Insights Hub, utilizing SME profile data to support and offer various SME-related services.
Anwar Hossain Chowdhury, Managing Director of SME Foundation, and Sabbir Ahmed, Country Manager, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan, Visa, along with Shruti Gupta, Head, Commercial & Money Movement Solutions, India and South Asia, Visa, were present on the occasion.
Assistant General Manager Md. Mostafizur Rahman, General Manager Farzana Khan, and other officials from SME Foundation and Visa were present.
Speaking on the occasion, Managing Director of SME Foundation, Anwar Hossain Chowdhury, said, "Our collaboration with Visa marks a significant milestone in SME Foundation's commitment to accelerating the digital transformation of SMEs in Bangladesh. By integrating advanced digital payment systems, we aim to enhance financial inclusion, reduce operational costs, and drive revenue growth for SMEs."
The SME sector currently contributes 32 percent to Bangladesh's economy.